


that love might be in your heart

by strongandlovestofic



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Arranged Marriage, Erotic Swordfighting, False Identity, Impersonation, Implied Mpreg, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other, Slow Burn, aka my jam, for real this time, i guess, okay ch2 tags time i guess, this is just a historically inaccurate trashy romance novel, uh what else
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:14:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strongandlovestofic/pseuds/strongandlovestofic
Summary: Tomorrow Prince Matthew of Neuxmaine is to be wed to Prince Brian of Baltimere, and Pat — a member of the Neauxmaine royal guard — has been responding toMatthewfor the last six days.Pat had thought it was a joke.
Relationships: Brian David Gilbert/Patrick Gill
Comments: 34
Kudos: 90
Collections: Polygolidays Gift Exchange 2019!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trigonometrical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trigonometrical/gifts).



> good news nerds the title's from an _enya_ song, get behind me, hozier
> 
> HAPPY POLIGOLIDAYS, TRIGORY ♥ ♥ ♥ i hope you enjoy!!

“I’m clearly older than you.”

“If you shave…”

“ _Simone_.”

  


♚♔♚

  


It had been a joke, when Simone had come up with the plan. Pat had been certain it was a joke.

The Kingdom of Baltimere is old blood, settled before there were books to record history. They’ve shared a peaceful border with Neauxmaine for generations, but there’s never been a formal treaty. Which has been fine for generations. Which _had_ been fine until summer after summer brought too much heat, and winter after winter too little snow, and Baltimere’s neighbors to the south started clamoring for the kingdom’s access to the bay, and suddenly what had been an unspoken agreement needed to be _spoken_ , and _recorded_ , quickly.

Queen Simone of Neauxmaine is wed to Ser Jenna of Santloire, a rare… not a love match, but a happy marriage of companionship. They greatly enjoy each other’s company, at least, and it’s politically convenient to have cemented an alliance with one of the more bullish inner kingdoms.

Of course, there’s a second option: Prince Matthew, Simone’s younger brother and a boy Pat had spent much of his youth trying to keep from escaping the palace to _adventure_ , is unwed. He’s also always been a bit of a freethinker. So when his marriage to the youngest prince of Baltimere is announced, he… disappears.

Pat had warned the captain of the guard of the risk, had pulled his father to the side and told him in no uncertain terms that if Simone was opinionated then Matthew was _pig-headed_ , that he wouldn’t do anything he didn’t want to do, and his father had clasped his shoulder in his stern, paternal way and intoned that the prince would do what was needed for the good of the kingdom.

Except he fucking _disappeared_.

Eventually, with Matthew clearly gone or eloped or dead in a ditch somewhere, Simone proposed a plan. They were deep in their cups and a week out from Matthew’s planned nuptials, and Pat laughed when she suggested it: _You’re an omega_ , she’d said thoughtfully. _We look alike_.

It was absurd.

 _If you squint, maybe_ , he’d laughed, and not thought any more of it until the following morning when he was yelled awake before dawn by Lady Estella, Matthew’s omega-in-waiting, and told he needed _training, if this was going to work_.

Pat’s not used to riding in a carriage: he’s ridden days in a saddle — even slept upright when needs be, lashed into his seat — but he’s never sat on his ass in what he assumes is the lap of luxury and felt so distinctly uncomfortable. The bench is padded and there’s adequate support at his back and frankly, he’s never had more miserable a trip.

He could fault the clothes: more structured than he’s used to, suited more to an omega prince than a member of the guard, boning and silk and godsforsaken _ruffles_. (He misses his riding leathers.)

Bromo Castle looms in the distance, a murky grey that’s hard to distinguish against the stormy sky above the Atalantiac Sea, and he could blame the sinking feeling in his stomach on the clothes, the difficulty he’s having maintaining steady breathing on the corset. He _could_...

Tomorrow Prince Matthew of Neuxmaine is to be wed to Prince Brian of Baltimere, and Pat’s been responding to _Matthew_ for the last six days.

He’d thought it was a joke.

  


♚♔♚

  


He meets Her Majesty the Queen Dowager and he remembers the proper greeting and the proper way to hold her hand while he properly bows. The crown prince of Baltimere greets him stiffly before huffing a laugh, as though ashamed of his discomfort. The princess clasps both of his hands firmly in hers and gives him a smile that surprises him with its ready warmth, and — his future spouse is _unavailable, I’m afraid_ , the queen clucks, and Pat stands up straighter in his godsdamned frippery and plasters a smile on his face and tries not to feel the snub.

He has no leg to stand on anyway; he’s a guard masquerading as a prince, and if they knew he’d be thrown into the Atalantiac. Weighted down.

He didn’t think shaving did _that_ much for his appearance but so far no one has noticed he’s years older than Prince Matthew should be. Perhaps they’ll assume he’s worn weary from the journey. Perhaps Prince Brian has run away as well, and they don’t have an ass in the guard they can pluck up and replace him with, and this entire venture will be a farce from start to finish.

He does meet his intended at dinner, after he’s had time to settle into his rooms — plural, more than one, there’s a tiled bathroom and a nursery that he opens the door to and then immediately shuts — and bathe, which was an event in and of itself, given how many times he had to insist he didn’t require assistance, _no, thank you_ , before being left alone with the porcelain bathtub steaming with clear, sweet-smelling water.

He seems nice, Prince Brian. He rises when Pat enters the hall, and he reaches abortively towards him before realizing there’s a wide table between them, at which point his arm falls awkwardly to his side and he laughs. His mouth curves easily into a smile.

“It’s my pleasure to welcome you to Baltimere,” he says, and then when his sister clears his throat, “Ah, that is, after you’ve been welcomed. I was — indisposed.”

“He’d hidden away in the barracks like a child,” Princess Laura chides, and Pat can see the beginnings of a blush creep above Brian’s collar, “because he was nervous.”

Brian’s smile stays wide but his eyes narrow, and Pat swallows back a laugh, ignores the ache of missing his sister. “Elder sisters are nuisances regardless of the kingdom, I see,” he says, and Laura waves her hand at them both dismissively and Brian simply looks grateful Pat isn’t holding his feet to the coals.

“How is Simone?” the crown prince — Patrick, his name is Patrick, and it’s not confusing at all because Pat is of course Matthew, _gods_ — asks, and Pat has to catch himself before he corrects: _My sister’s name is Rhiannon_.

Pat knows he replies, but he doesn't recall what it is he says. Something that makes Patrick laugh. So he's at least entertaining — no, _charming_.

 _An omega is, above all else, charming,_ Lady Estella had lectured while he sat at a posture he'd last maintained as a child, during sermons. _Your duty is to provide respite for those around you. You will support your spouse in their endeavors and seek to make yourself indispensable._

Brian isn't laughing; he and Laura are discussing… an upcoming festival, Pat thinks, as she says something that sounds like _awarding the harvest maid_.

Pat has no reason to be offended by Brian's disinterest. If it is disinterest… but no, the prince remains deep in discussion with his sister, and his mother, and then with a servant who brings them their next course.

Which is fine. Pat's disinterested. He spent the last week being consumed by a cockamamie scheme that will dictate the rest of his life, unless he's found out, in which case it will dictate his death, too, but he doesn't care. It's no issue if the alpha he's going to be shackled to — if the man cares more for the attention of his guard, or his staff, or his family. If Pat is here merely to join their kingdoms. To marry and fuck him and.

 _If one is unable to make oneself indispensable,_ Estella, the wretched woman, had said archly, _then one may at least provide an heir and be of some use._

If Pat can’t hold the prince’s attention then perhaps once he’s fucked and bred he’ll be left to his own devices.

After dinner, Prince Brian escorts him back to his rooms. Pat focuses on the number of turns, notes which hallways continue where, and how long they seem to go on. Old habits. And… this will be his home. Is, now. He needs to become familiar with the drafty halls.

The prince hasn’t touched him, not even a guiding hand on the small of his back, which Pat is equal parts grateful for and confused by. ( _Alphas can rarely be trusted_ , Estella had advised, as though Pat hadn't grown up with Simone, as though his own father weren’t an alpha.) In fact, the prince looks like he’s steeling himself and Pat — gods, it’s frustrating, when the person with all of the fucking power acts like he’s the one… Like he’s the one shoved out of his home, dolled up and pretending to be someone else, offered up for.

Pat swallows.

For the good of Neauxmaine, which Pat swore on his life to protect when he turned 14. Which he had always known he would bleed for, in some way or another.

The prince clears his throat outside Pat's rooms, and Pat turns to him. They're nearly the same height, and it's easy to hold himself stiff and straight — intimidating, as he was trained before Estella's nonsense. It makes the prince appear smaller. It almost makes Pat feel in control.

The prince gives a short nod, and then he says, resolute, "I want you to know that I'll be kind to you."

Pat forces his hands to unclench at his sides. Forces himself to take a breath. Forces his teeth not to clench. _Kind_. “Thank you, your Royal Highness, for your charity,” he says, with every whiff of _delightsome_ Estella drilled into him that he can muster while trying not to curse, which he trusts is _not much_ , and he leaves the prince standing wrongfooted in the corridor.

  


♚♔♚

  


The bed linens are butter-soft and his calloused hands catch on the duvet when he smooths his palms across the surface. Someone has lit the lamps and the room is — it's lovely, if Pat were feeling generous. Old, the fixtures worn but in good repair, and simply decorated with a painting of a glade filled with woodland creatures. There's nothing extravagant about the room: it's big, sure, and he thinks he could step bodily into the wardrobe if he wanted to, but it's not gaudy.

(He hasn't opened the wardrobe. He's not certain anything's waiting for him there, but he isn't going to check.)

It's… lovely. Warm, even without the fireplace lit, and more than he's ever had to himself.

One door leads to the bath, and another to the nursery.

There's a fourth door in the room he's unsure of — but then he hears the soft closing of a door through it and he swears under his breath and hops to his feet and listens, his hands pressed to the heavy wood.

There's a low murmur he thinks he recognizes, and then the slow sounds of someone moving about the room.

It would only make sense for his room to connect to the prince's. For convenience, if nothing else. To ensure he's easily accessible.

He's angry, even if he has no true reason to be. Even if he's the liar here, masquerading as a prince. He's — nauseous.

He throws the lock on the door.

  


♚♔♚

  


Baltimere is not the wealthiest of kingdoms, but it contains a wealth of tradition: Pat's dressed in the clothes he brought for the wedding, trousers and a loose shirt and another damned corset and a jacket, and the man who'd dogged him yesterday about helping him bathe — Churchill, Pat knows his name, he should stop being such an ass — brings him an array of other things to wear, because _tradition_.

There's a heavy broach carved in the shape of a crab, which Churchill assures him is not a joke. There's a pocket watch that Pat slips into his trousers, that Churchill says belonged to Prince Rupert, _your betrothed's great grandfather_. Churchill sighs when he notices Pat's lack of piercings (and Pat has no way to explain that he'd watched his sister curse up a storm when a stray blow during training had torn a dear gift from their father through her earlobe, putting him entirely off the idea) but they manage to find a piece that works anyway, some delicate seashell filigree that curves around his ear and makes him feel uncomfortably… _dainty_.

"His Royal Highness hoped you would honor him," Churchill says, and he turns to face Pat with a rosy peach jacket laying across his arms. "He thinks you're of a size."

Pat stares down at the jacket and considers what manner of no he's allowed now, and how it will change by the end of the day. He’s looked stupid enough, trussed up in Matthew’s clothes and whatever they were able to cobble together to make him look sufficiently royal. But at least Simone insisted it all be _dark_. "Pretty sure I’ll look ill," he says, and Churchill's mouth pinches tight at the edges. Right. Not much of a _no_ then.

He tosses his black jacket onto the bed and grabs the other, regardless of how clearly Churchill wants to help him with. It's tight in the shoulders, but it fits. It's… embroidered, Pat can tell that now he's wearing it, with delicate blue flowers along the collar, and Pat’s not — he’s not crude, he doesn’t assume anything other than occupation when faced with someone’s attire, but this more than anything drives home the point that.

That he’s not himself. Not anymore, not here. This is the finest jacket he’s ever worn. He can feel the opulence of it, even if he likely looks like an overstuffed pig, 

“Very regal,” Churchill says, his tone kind in a way Pat’s certain means he looks a fool, and Pat grimaces out a smile.

  


♚♔♚

  


It’s difficult for him to remember the ceremony even while it’s in progress. There are — a lot of people, and he walks arm in arm with the prince between the rows of attendees who he’s probably supposed to know, at least by reputation; members of the nobility and gentry of Baltimere and the surrounding kingdoms. Not his family: Matthew’s or his own. It wasn’t wise for the rulers of Neauxmaine to vacate the capital during such tumultuous times, and his sister had argued for the right to accompany him but she’s a shit liar. She would have had them both anchored to anvils and dropped into the sea before they were settled into their rooms.

The prince hasn’t looked at him. He’s wearing a dark jacket that’s — that’s too wide in the shoulders. That Churchill must have taken from Pat’s rooms and handed off to him, and if he were at a distance Pat could possibly see the romance of the gesture. Could see it as something that doesn’t feel like a violation. A — stupid, controlling thing.

They kneel at the wooden altar. The officiant directs them to grasp hands. The prince’s hand is warm and dry and his nails are bitten to the quick: a habit, or nerves before the ceremony.

Pat’s knees begin to ache. The corset’s too damned tight.

At some point the officiant sets a delicately carved box before them on the altar, and offers them the bands inside. The prince removes a long, off-white cord and then Pat takes his own choice, a strong length of dark leather that he'd taken from his mare's bridle, embossed with Neauxmaine's seal and the guard's crest.

Estella hadn't thought it proper. Pat had held his ground. _A prince wouldn't choose..._ she'd tried with Simone, and Pat had pushed past her, looked at his oldest friend. Felt the words burn bitter in his throat: _Give me this, Simone. Fucking —_ and Estella had gasped, her hand at her throat, _Please._ And Simone had, she had let him have this, some bit of himself in the midst of the rewriting of his life.

When the prince binds their wrists together Pat realizes he's chosen some kind of stiff sinew, and Pat's sure it means something, but he needs to focus on his own cord, which of course he gets to tie with his left hand.

"Can I," Prince Brian offers, and Pat wills his hackles down and nods, murmurs _thank you, Your Royal Highness_ to see him wince — and Pat has devoted his life to being good and moral and worthy of his queen, but under duress he can't help being an ass. (Most of the time he can’t help being an ass. Now he has an excuse for it.)

The prince helps him bind them together.

The officiant declares them bound.

They stand.

The prince starts forward and Pat lurches, connected at the wrist, doesn't stumble but. And it'd be funny if this weren't — his godsdamned wedding day, if he weren't dressed like a… if. Fuck. Pat twists their hands together, pulls the prince back to his side, ignores the sudden look his — husband gives him, and because he's. Because this is his wedding day, he forces a smile on his face and inclines his head towards the kind people in attendance, and he holds the prince's hand and they walk back down between the rows.

  


♚♔♚

  


He'd forgotten there would be a celebration.

The cords are taken from their wrists — _to be fashioned into something more wearable, your Royal Highnesses_ , and Pat feels the blood drain his face.

"Are you all right?" the prince, Brian, _the prince_ asks him, and Pat doesn't have a way to explain how it feels to be referred to as… what would he say, anyway.

"Just faint, sire," he says, and a cloud of worry passes over the prince's features.

"There's food and drink in the hall, I'm sure in absurd amounts," and that's when Pat remembers there's a party. That he has to pretend to be entertaining again. Charming. "But if you're not feeling up for it, I could explain," the prince continues, and his hand lifts into Pat's line of vision, hovers there as though the man's considering whether he can touch him, before it drops. "No one would hold it against you."

Pat doesn't know as much about the nobility as he should, but he knows this is a lie. He knows he's the stranger here, had it beaten into his head over the week that he has responsibilities, and begging off of his first opportunity to impress the people he'll be rubbing elbows with for the rest of his godsforsaken life would… the thought might put Estella into an early grave.

"I'm okay," he says, and the prince frowns.

"You're okay?"

Pat nods. "I'm okay." What's another lie!

There's food and drink. There's dozens of people wishing him well and saying things like _you're a good match, what striking features_ and looking him up and down like he's a prized broodmare. Prince Brian navigates him through the crowd, the both of them smiling blearily (Pat) and easily (the prince), and then leaves him at the high table, tells him to take a moment for himself but that _I'm expected to mingle_ with what Pat thinks may be a carefully disguised grimace, and strides back into the crowd.

Pat sits at the table and makes himself eat, drinks from the goblet a servant had brought him with a low bow, full of a warm, fruity wine that must be a Baltimere specialty.

He probably should have retired to his room. He's not being charming, he's — sitting. Watching the prince work the room like this is his preferred setting. 

Brian looks… alive.

He's not explicitly the center of attention. He navigates into a conversation with a group of nobles and Pat watches as he encourages a noblewoman to begin a story, watches her gesticulate, watches him nod and smile. She finishes with a flourish and the group laughs, and the prince leans in to another man, seems to prompt him into giving his own tale, and it's — fascinating to see. The prince could command the group but he doesn't. Instead draws them in, has them share, lets them feel special.

Pat has not drunk enough to feel this warm. He's not deep in his cups — he's finished one goblet and that servant had reappeared, provided him with more, but he can nearly outdrink his sister, _can_ outdrink Simone. Had on a few notable occasions, like when she made him swear to never besmirch her good name as she expelled the contents of her stomach into the dirt, trying to avoid her shoes. But he does feel warm, his skin flushed from the heat of the room, of the crowd.

If he were drunk he'd be giggly. Stupid. He'd be loud and behave in no manner befitting a prince, fake or otherwise. He’s not drunk: he’s… warm.

He leans back in his seat with the wine between his hands. Watches the prince work his way about the room. Doesn’t dwell on the way several sets of eyes dart between them, followed by peals of laughter and hurried hushing, mouths hidden behind fans or hands.

(Pat has never before been a matter of gossip. There was ample opportunity given his close friendship with the queen, but Simone only _appears_ to be conniving — she’s one of the most guileless people he’s ever met, his current situation notwithstanding. If there were gossip, it never caught fire. He was never stared at like this. No one looked at him with critical eyes and wondered if the de Rochefort omega were worth the alliance. The investment.)

It’s a room full of people waiting for the prince to take his hand and lean in close, whisper into his ear, exert power over his omega and take him back to his room to fuck.

The servant refills his goblet.

He’s — angry. He’s been angry, the emotion made worse because it’s not his right to be, he agreed to this, he would give his life for Neauxmaine, he _has_ , he is doing so right now and he’s tight with it, sinew strangling his heart, his lungs, and full of a heat he can’t dismiss as alcohol. He’s angry, and every time he catches sight of the prince — his husband, _Brian_ — that tightness spreads and evolves into something… The man is handsome. Charming. If he were to level that smile at Pat, then — the tightness evolves into something that spreads heat under his skin, circles in the pit of his stomach. Anger and.

He beckons to the servant, the woman, he doesn’t know her name, shit, should he know her name? “I’m not well,” he says, and when she leans in to him, her face full of worry, the smell of her scourges Pat’s senses. He feels himself recoil before he can stop it and he shakes his head, shit, _shit_ , he’s drunk. His clothes are too tight, too many thick layers. “Please — I don’t know.” He doesn’t know where his room is. Another fucking indignity. “Can you lead me back to my room?”

She nods. He follows her, and does not stumble. He focuses on the placement of his feet, one before the next, and he presses the back of his hand to his mouth, his nose, when he passes too close by the guard at the door who smells _wrong_.

He doesn’t pay attention to the route. He recognizes the door when she leads him to it and he dismisses her as she’s mid-offer to assist him settling in, waves his hand at her rudely, gods, and stumbles across the floor towards his bed. He hears the door shut and he struggles with his jacket — the prince’s jacket.

Once it’s in his hands he sways. He shudders in a breath, tasting the lingering scent of it, and he slumps onto his bed. Fuck. He feels… dizzy with it, this whirlwind of emotion. His clothes are too tight. His skin is too tight. He holds the jacket to his nose and breathes it in, mouths at the collar. Shit.

  


♚♔♚

  


He manages to shuck off the rest of his clothes. Manages to clamber up the bed and — consider, briefly, sliding under the covers before his skin begins to itch. He's using the jacket as a pillow, as a fucking child's soother, his fingers twisted in the fabric, and he… he must sleep. He must, because he blinks awake when the door opens, when a voice like the strike of flint in a cavern calls, "Matthew?" and Pat thinks, murkily, _that's me_.

"M'here," he responds, and he pushes himself upright and looks blearily towards the cracked door, to, oh, the prince, _Brian_ standing there. His head is haloed by the light behind him. Pat can't see his face. Pat's bones hurt.

"Are you all right?" He moves into the room, slowly — he's still haloed, and Pat is a moth. He clumsily shuffles down his bed and the prince hesitates, and if Pat could move he could touch him. He knows innately it would settle the ache flowing through his veins. He knows."You look — are you…?"

The scent of the jacket, more concentrated, _fresher_ , fills Pat's mouth, coats his fucking nostrils, and it smells so good that Pat thinks he whimpers — and then the prince is moving but the wrong way, moving _back_ , his flint-bright voice spilling out words that Pat isn't interested in understanding, not when it's accompanied by his exit, by the door closing behind him.

Pat collapses back onto the bed. Tries to breathe, tries to — concentrate. Tries to think beyond the bright burn of his godsdamned alpha as he presses a palm against his, oh, his eager cock.

  


♚♔♚

  


He makes it to breakfast even though he feels like he's been trodden under the wheels of a cart. (It happened once, when he was 16. He's lucky his only lasting scar is his crooked nose.) He's directed to sit across from the prince and he still feels a... pull when he looks at him, a foreign feeling in the pale morning hours.

"You have my — my utmost apologies for last night," Prince Brian says when Pat's in the middle of sopping up yolk with his bread.

They're alone, purposefully or by happenstance, but Pat feels the urge to survey the room regardless. To ensure no one else is present for a discussion of his… _display_ , last night. "For what, sire?"

The prince frowns. Stalls by playing with his own yolk. "I didn't know you'd been given metswell," he says, and though Pat doesn’t recognize the name it only takes him a moment to understand.

“The wine, the fruity, um,” Pat says, and he manages not to drop his bread. Sets it on his plate instead. Looks at a point just beyond the prince’s head. “That’s why,” he says, and he thinks of the anger, unchecked when he prides himself on his self-control. Thinks of the — the way he would have. What he would have done if the prince were less… kind. Thinks of the directionless _wanting_ that only made sense when the prince stood inside his door.

“I’m sorry,” the prince says, firm, and Pat looks at him, the anger there but under godsdamned control, even while the prince looks distraught. Upset, as though _he_ had been drugged. As if he had been the one who’d felt empty, and even emptier after he’d come over his fist. But then — gods, Pat is ostensibly his, an extension of him (Estella made that fucker of an idea crystal clear), if not his property then his omega, and what an offense that must be, for someone to assume the prince could only fuck his omega properly if his omega were made pliant. “That was —”

“Unnecessary,” Pat interrupts, and then bites back the wince. ( _Be agreeable._ ) The prince looks startled, and for a moment Pat thinks he’s gotten it wrong, that he’s misunderstood, assigned intent where it was unwarranted — but what does it matter if he has? It was unnecessary. This alliance is important for the wellbeing of Neauxmaine, and if he weren’t in this position then Matthew would have been, and it doesn’t matter how... how _kind_ the prince is, how he doesn’t take advantage of the circumstances, when. “I’m your husband.” When one day, metswell or no, Pat will be — overcome. Undone by his own body. He will need, and the prince will be there.

“That’s not,” the prince objects, and Pat nods sharply and pushes back from the table — fuck, be agreeable, you ass, just _try_ , but he can’t, not when he thinks about the press of the prince’s jacket against his lips, his tongue, when he thinks about how much he wanted.

“I’m sorry, sire, I’m not. I’m not hungry,” Pat says, and to the prince’s credit he doesn’t try and stop him from leaving the hall. Pat glances back as he closes the door behind him and sees his expression: lost. Angry, maybe. Good. Good, let him be angry. Let him feel even an ounce of the frustration Pat’s carrying in his shoulders and…

He hesitates in the middle of a hallway.

He has no godsdamned idea where he’s going.

  


♚♔♚

  


Pat has no duties. He has no responsibilities. He wakes in the morning when he pleases — the sun rises in Baltimere just as it did in Neauxmaine, and he’s out of bed before it’s fully visible over the horizon. It’s what he’s used to: up at dawn to complete his patrol.

He learns the corridors of the castle, the names of the servants. He learns that Princess Laura frequently ventures into the town to work with the children, and that the crown prince is often locked in with the kingdom’s advisors from breakfast till past dinner. He meets with the queen dowager who chides him that he should call her _Janet_ , a request that shouldn’t fill him with discomfort (he’s called Simone _Simone_ since she was born) but does anyway. He learns that his husband keeps late hours — not because they discuss it, but because Pat hears him sometimes when he’s half-awake in his room, lying in his ridiculous bed. He hears the prince close his own door and move about, hears him hum softly.

Pat has been married for two weeks and he’s interacted more with Churchill than with his own husband. Churchill even brought him the newly-fashioned band of bridle leather and, gods, whatever the stiff white length of cord the prince chose was, interwoven together to represent their _bond, sir_ , to wear about his wrist. He’d said something apologetic that Pat hadn’t paid attention to, about how _usually his Royal Highness would be the one to present you with…_

He — should be grateful. There are ways this could have gone, ways he has no experience with, has never actually seen, but that Estella hinted at darkly. He’s not naive enough to expect every couple that parades themselves through court is equitable outside of the public eye, that either treats the other well, that every marriage ends as well as Simone and Jenna’s has: but he’s not involved in gossip. He’s a member of the guard. Was a member of the guard.

He should be grateful he’s been left more or less alone.

He assumes Prince Brian’s being _kind_.

He begins his third week exploring the courtyard, and it’s mere coincidence that the guard is training when he starts his rounds. (The prince was absent the day Pat arrived because he was with the guard. He spends much of his time with the guard, if the whispers Pat’s started noticing are truthful — and it can’t be that the man trains, himself: Pat felt his hands when they were wed. The calluses were in the wrong places.)

They’re running drills and Pat thinks a number of the people wielding practice swords are knights — he recognizes one in particular, who he’s seen in the corridor outside his room. One of the prince’s friends, perhaps… The nearest pair of combatants throw themselves at each other and the sudden _thud_ of dull steel hits Pat in the chest. Shit. It’s been a month and he...

His clothes are wrong for this, but if he loosens the blouse and belt he can breathe more readily, move his shoulders properly. He slinks away from the courtyard fence and finds what must be — shit, yes, the storage room, unlocked door and all, and he grabs a weathered leather coat to slide on over his frippery, finds another stored blade.

He hasn’t shaved since the wedding and the guardmaster doesn’t recognize him, why would she, and when the woman hollers at him to fall into line, Pat feels — free. His body knows this, knows how to stand, how to hold the sword, how to listen for sharp orders and sharper corrections. It doesn’t require him to think about what’s fucking _proper_ , to remember to be _pleasant_. When someone’s bearing down on you with a sword you have no time to worry about what happens when your husband’s no longer kind, or if you’ll forever be ignored. You can’t waste time dwelling on which option is worse.

A taller man, broad in the shoulders — oh, the prince’s friend, well then, this excursion won’t be long for this world — moves to stand before him, and Pat thinks he’s been made when he clocks the man’s wary expression until he taps their swords together, and then they’re off. Shit, he’s missed this, the physicality of it. Pat’s never been a strategist, he leaves that to his sister, but he’s a “right scoundrel with a blade” per his father, and he’s never shied away from throwing himself bodily into a fight. You follow through with each lunge, you let the blade become an extension of your arm and you — sometimes — fake your opponent out and ram your shoulder into their chest.

“Gods above,” the man gripes when Pat retreats from him, and Pat laughs and shakes his hair out of his eyes. “Are we fighting dirty? Is that what we’re doing?”

Pat knows he must look a fool, grinning as he is, but he shrugs the offending shoulder. Maybe the man knows who he is. Maybe he doesn’t. Either way, the man flashes his teeth in a quick smile before launching forward.

The pairs on either side of them eventually shift away from their antics — gods, are probably giving them dirty looks, but there’s a burn in Pat’s legs and a lightness in his chest he hasn’t felt since he stepped onto the carriage outside of Portlo Castle, since he stared out the window at the diminishing outlines of his family, of his queen. Gods, hasn’t felt since before that, when the pieces of their deception started falling into place.

The man eventually gets the best of Pat: he’s not surprised, and it’s a good move, feinting a stumble to trip Pat, sending him tumbling onto the hard dirt. Pat’s sword clatters next to him and he collapses back, laughing up at the sky until the man offers him a hand.

“You motherfucker,” Pat says happily, a compliment, and the man grins and bows his head, says, “Call me Jonah, sire,” as he helps him up, and Pat hears the hiss of horror from the guardmaster as the woman puts two and two together.

Jonah has the good graces to look guilty as she rushes over to them and begins to frantically try to assess Pat’s health without touching him, and Pat says again, aggrieved, “You motherfucker.”

  


♚♔♚

  


“Where’d you learn to fight?”

Pat hesitates — the quill stalls for long enough on the paper that an inkspot forms mid-word, damnit — and he glances up from the letter to his parents that he’s doing his damnedest to make seem like it’s not a letter to his parents. (Writing a letter to the royal guard, obviously. As one does.)

The prince hovers near the doorway, only a step inside, as though he’s expecting Pat to shoo him away. As though Pat has any claim to be the sole patron of the library at midday.

“Pardon?” Pat asks, because he has an answer, obviously, could describe the hours he’s spent with his face in the dirt after being knocked to his ass. He could ramble about how he’d felt when he’d finally been given a real sword, held the weight of it in his hands, carried it at his side and known he had accomplished something worthy. But none of that is how Prince Matthew would have learned.

The prince seems to take his response as a good sign, because he slowly moves into the room until he’s standing behind a chair opposite the desk where Pat’s taken residence. “Jonah told me, that’s who, uh, who you sparred with the other day. He told me you knew what you were doing.”

“I called him a fucker after he tripped me, and scandalized the guardmaster,” Pat says and the prince laughs, loud and sudden and surprised, and Pat smiles reflexively.

“Yes, I uh, I heard about _that_ too,” the prince says, and he runs his hand through his hair and looks bashful. Pat remembers the foreign longing of their wedding day, thinks of what that flush would have done to him then. Feels his smile twist. “I can barely hold a sword,” Prince Brian continues, and he gestures to the chair. “May I?”

Pat manages a hum of agreement and the prince sits. And then they’re closer than they’ve been since that breakfast, exchanged more words than they have since the morning Pat left the prince sitting at the table looking — bereft. The prince is smiling at him and Pat breathes out slowly. (It's a nice smile.)

"I can barely hold a sword right," Prince Brian repeats, and he leans forward in the chair, his elbows on the desk. “Where’d you learn?”

“My sister,” Pat says before he thinks it through — he’s writing to her now, a paragraph at the end of his letter to _my most honored knight Rhiannon_ , which she would sock him in the shoulder for if he weren’t two days’ ride south and a prince besides — and he bites down on the side of his tongue as punishment. Shit. _Shit_ and godsdamn. “And uh, I mean, there were also,” he tries, but the prince’s smile is already crumpling.

“I met Simone once when we were young,” the prince says, and he taps his fingers on the desk. “She didn’t strike me as a fighter.”

“She bit me once,” Pat replies, which _is_ the truth, but then they were children and he was pulling her hair and trying to get her into a headlock — and thank gods, Prince Brian laughs again, and leans back. Appears to accept this latest deceit.

“Maybe I should have visited Neauxmaine more often,” the prince says, and he pushes his hair out of his eyes and rolls his shoulders. He stays silent then; Estella didn’t have to train Pat how not to be rude, and so he doesn’t return to his letter, even though the prince makes no move to engage him further. He’s merely… watching Pat. Which is his right. Even if he’s taken no liberties with him yet.

“Do you think,” the prince starts, and then frowns. He looks down at the desk, lifts a hand and starts to draw whorls into its surface, and something about the motion fills Pat with… gods, an ache, a sadness, an exhaustion carried by his blood through every inch of him. It seems a childlike gesture. It seems the prince is also at a loss for what to do with the situation. (With Pat.) Perhaps he regrets seeking Pat out.

And then he looks up, and there’s a determination to his gaze that Pat hasn’t seen since he promised to be _kind_. “This has been — fucked up, hasn’t it.”

It catches Pat by surprise, punches a laugh out of him. Prince Brian smiles, a wry twist of his mouth, and Pat drops his quill into the ink pot. Tries not to be swept up by the shock of the admission: give him credit he might not deserve. (Tries to think of what the prince’s angle is. If he has one.) “Which part.”

The prince’s smile fades into something… softer, and he looks towards the set of windows overlooking the castle courtyard. “I made a bad first impression.”

“You had duties to attend to,” Pat says, and means _yes_ , but how is he supposed to explain that? What leg does he have to stand on?

“I know,” the prince responds, and he breathes out slowly and then looks back at Pat. “I’m responsible for meeting with the merchants’ guild tomorrow afternoon, nothing serious, more a show of good faith than anything else. They’ll just want to talk my ear off. Do you want to join me?”

Pat feels the pressing weight of _am I allowed to say no_ on his chest but it’s — fuck, but it has to be better than trawling the castle hallways like a bored ghost.

“It won’t be very exciting,” the prince continues, and Pat watches him run a finger over the nails of his other hand, like he’s seeking out snags. “They’ll be expecting Patrick, not me, but.” The prince shrugs and Pat can’t believe his fucking luck that the crown prince is named godsdamned _Patrick_ of all names, so he can suffer through an attack of panic every time someone says his name.

“Better than this,” Pat says, less charitably than he should, and the prince huffs a laugh and turns a smile on him that does nothing for Pat at all.

  


♚♔♚

  


Pat spends most of the meeting with the merchants’ guild feeling like an overstuffed ham in his finery and fielding questions about Neauxmaine industry, which was neither what he expected nor something he’s prepared to discuss in depth. Would Matthew have known this? Surely not. But Pat imagines he could have bullshat his way through this conversation more readily.

“And the ships,” a woman dressed in layers of velvet and pearls says, “the ships are legendary. My compliments to your kingdom, of course, but one must imagine the access to the forests of Mt Kadin have contributed greatly.”

There is sage nodding amongst the four merchants who have pinioned him to the wall, while the prince is across the room laughing jovially with the larger group, assumedly discussing actual matters of import (ha, import) and not being ridden for information.

Pat has never traveled by ship; his father sailed as a young man, made his way across the Atalantiac — but Pat had never left Neauxmaine until he was carted to Baltimere, and his understanding of ships is limited to _that one has a sail_ or _that one has_ two _sails_. But he’s also not a dullard: he can’t imagine a group of merchants is genuinely interested in ships.

“I’d, uh, think that trade agreements can be put into place regarding the lumber,” Pat says, which sounds smart and fortunately has the group continuing to nod, and then — thank gods — Prince Brian turns to catch his eye.

Something in Pat’s expression must alert him to the situation, because he excuses himself from his doting crowd and maneuvers his way through the merchants’ tightly knit circle of harassment to stand next to Pat, and Pat knows the relief he feels is because the prince is a known quantity and unlikely to badger him about scrimshaw, but it’s still not an emotion he associates with the man.

“Gloria, how good of you to entertain my husband,” the prince says, and the woman titters and touches her chest, and Pat is _not_ imagining the way she blinks her eyes slowly at him. Good gods. Is there no one in this kingdom who can withstand Prince Brian. “But I must steal him away. We’ve finished our lively conversations and we’re needed back at the castle.”

The group murmurs and Gloria sighs, and soon the prince is offering Pat a hand up into their carriage for their return to the castle.

“I forgot to tell you that they’re…” the prince says, and Pat mutters, “ _Vampiric_ ,” before thinking it through. He has only a moment to cycle through his panic — because the prince is laughing, leaning back in his seat and trying to cover his mouth, like that would hide his reaction.

“They want your wood, I assume,” he says, and Pat’s mind helpfully supplies a lewd rejoinder to that, something he would’ve said to his sister, or to Simone, but that under no circumstances should he say to —

“It _is_ legendary,” he replies, and he’s rewarded by a staggered silence followed by Prince Brian’s bark of laughter.

  


♚♔♚

  


Pat couldn’t call what happens next friendship. It’s nothing so defined as that, and it’s not a natural progression. He feels like some sort of project or — gods, a goal that the prince has set his sights on, but somehow he’s not insulted by the attention.

Prince Brian does have an innate charm about him.

When he seeks Pat out in the afternoons, or finds him as he’s leaving the hall after breakfast (having clearly just rolled out of bed, his hair askew), he smiles and asks Pat if he’s busy, asks him if he wants to accompany him to the village, or to review the grain stores. Much of it is mindless work, or tasks Pat knows were assigned to members of the queen’s council in Neauxmaine — but perhaps this is Prince Brian’s role, as the third child. Or perhaps he’s desperate to find something to do with his husband, to form some kind of bond beyond those tied about their wrists.

Pat does enjoy their time together, or at least finds some kind of satisfaction in _doing_ something, even if he often finds himself awkwardly shadowing the prince, watching him dazzle his way into the hearts of whomever they’re visiting. (He’s… he _is_ kind. He listens to his people. He asks Pat once, after they’ve visited with a family who had lost three children to the war in the south, if he thinks there’s anything more they could be doing. Pat… Pat doesn’t know, he knows so little of warfare, but the question sits with him. The weary expression on the prince’s face sits with him.)

“I’ve uh, nothing to do,” the prince tells him one morning, rubbing at his head as they stand in the hall. “Which is to say, I talked with Jonah. I’ve been dragging you every which way I think, and you haven’t had a chance to spar in a while.”

“Did you arrange a playdate?” Pat asks, and the prince grimaces. Protests, “You — I’m not your. Gods, no, that’s,” and looks abashed when Pat smirks.

Prince Brian watches from the fence and hollers support for whomever seems to be losing, which Pat is happy to say is Jonah today, but when Pat manages to disarm Jonah, send his blade clamoring to the dirt several feet away, the prince applauds and whoops, “Yeah! Kick his ass!”

Jonah mutters and goes to retrieve his sword and Pat turns with a grin towards Brian, seeking — nothing. Seeking nothing. Not eager to see his smile, especially not when he’s the sole reason for it.

Pat gives him a low bow and the prince whoops again, and Pat carefully does not feel anything at all.

  


♚♔♚

  


“Do you ever ride?” Pat asks him — Prince Brian had been caught up in meetings until late afternoon, and Pat had found him half-asleep in the library, rereading a book of letters from some ancient dignitary to some other dead noble that looked boring as hell, to be honest. (He was taking expansive notes, but he didn't seem particularly taken by the process.)

The prince stows his quill and blinks blearily up at Pat, and Pat quells the sudden urge to reach forward and clear the sleep from the corners of his eyes. "I know how, if that's what you're asking."

"We take carriages whenever we travel," Pat counters, and Prince Brian hums.

"I… don't necessarily like horses," he says, "I had an experience. When I was younger."

And Pat pulls up a chair and the prince elaborates on how he was nearly kicked in the jaw by an unwieldy mare when he was a boy, and somehow a story that should be nerve-wracking is instead humorous, and Prince Brian waves his arms about with a flourish as he describes _the beast which near done me in_ , and Pat hides a laugh with a cough into his arm.

"I take this all to mean you won't go riding with me," Pat says after the prince concludes his tale of woe, and the prince gives an elaborate shudder to — maybe hear Pat laugh again.

They sit together until the hour grows late, and Pat knows he heads to bed earlier than the prince but the man packs up as he makes to leave, and the two of them walk slowly through the castle back to their rooms.

"I would enjoy it," Prince Brian says outside Pat's door, and it takes Pat a moment to remember their previous conversation. "You'd get to see me terrified, so at least one of us would have fun. And I'd enjoy your smile."

Pat swallows. He draws his tongue over his lips — they’re, they’re _dry_ — and he watches the way the prince’s eyes soften, the way his mouth bends gentle.

“Okay,” he says, feeling an uncomfortable mix of stupid and bemused, and the prince wishes him a goodnight and retires to his room. Leaves Pat standing outside of his door, wondering at his own reaction.

  


♚♔♚

  


“I’ve got another adventure,” Prince Brian announces outside of the dining hall, holding up a finger like he’s about to lecture. “It’s going to be riveting.”

“I’m on the edge of my seat,” Pat replies, as dull as he’s able, but he’s sore from yesterday’s bout with Jonah — who’d gotten the better of him, and Pat had wrenched his shoulder attempting to keep up as a result — and the prospect of staring at the shelves in the library in the hopes of pulling up something that _isn’t_ a brief history of the rain patterns of Baltimere is exhausting.

“Good.” The prince claps his hands together and immediately turns, and when Pat doesn’t follow him he stops halfway down the hall. “Oh, uh — we’re going now, actually. To Roselle.”

“Roselle?”

“They’re celebrating their spring festival. It’s a lot of flowers.”

“ _Riveting_ ,” Pat agrees, and he doesn’t ask why this is a part of the prince’s schedule, but he does follow him.

  


♚♔♚

  


It’s another carriage ride. (They still haven’t gone out, the two of them. Pat’s not sure the prince was being serious. _I’d enjoy your smile_ , he’d said. A… joke.) Prince Brian holds the door open for him and then seats himself on the opposing bench, and they ride in companionable silence. Pat watches the castle grounds turn to village and then countryside. They pass through what must be the Adarak Woods, he remembers them from one of the maps he’d studied, which means they’re going north. Which means — he also remembers them from his ride here, when he was first brought here to be wed.

He’s struck by the childish idea of what were to happen if they simply continued north. If they passed into Neauxmaine. (He would still be Prince Matthew, unless the man had made his reappearance. Gods, does _he_ have to be Patrick Gill, son of the guardmaster, now? Has he returned at all? Does he know what Pat’s done for him?)

One day they’ll visit Neauxmaine — it only makes sense that they would. And how would that go?

“I usually go every year,” the prince says, and Pat thinks of him in the carved halls of Portlo, thinks of seeing him every year there prior to their meeting. “To Roselle,” he clarifies, and Pat hums to indicate he’s listening, even as his mind is within his own room in the eastern wing, even as he thinks of Brian standing in front of the single window at the foot of his bed, outlined by the morning sunlight.

“They provide much of the lumber for Baltimere. Most of it’s sent south as soon as it’s milled.” The prince picks at his nail beds and sighs, before looking out the window. “Most of _that_ goes further south, to the warfront.”

“I didn’t think there was active fighting.” Pat knows the reason for their marriage (“their” marriage) — knows Baltimere and Neauxmaine sought to establish an alliance in the event tensions at Baltimere’s southern border peaked, but this sounds…

“There’s not, officially.” Prince Brian frowns and looks down at his lap, runs his thumbs across his fingernails and then threads his hands together. “I’m not sure there is _unofficially_ either. Patrick is stuck in talks at all hours of the day, ostensibly to prevent anything from boiling over. I’m not privy to it.”

Pat knows little of the kingdom of Richemonte lying south of Baltimere’s borders — knows they want access to Baltimere’s bay and resources, knows they’ve picked fights (and won them) with many of their other neighbors.

The prince sighs. "But I can go and wish our people well. That's what I can do." He glances up at Pat. "What we can do."

It’s a heartening thought but Pat will believe it when he sees it. In each outing they’ve undertaken it’s become more and more clear that the people love their prince. And that sometimes Pat is also there.

He doesn’t blame them. He wasn’t raised to be charming, to woo with words and open smiles. He still has to remind himself not to be on his guard: there are other people to do that for him. He is not his own protector, and when he’s surprised by a man at his shoulder, asking him what he’d like to drink, _your Royal Highness_ , he shouldn’t respond by going for a sword that isn’t there. But he… does enjoy it. He does enjoy seeing more of the kingdom. He enjoys the food he’s offered, and the conversation when it’s clear he’s not being interrogated about the traditions and economy of Neauxmaine.

“Thank you for coming with me,” Prince Brian says.

And he enjoys… he has grown to enjoy Prince Brian’s company. By comparison, the empty library or the long hallways of the castle are less engaging, so. (That’s unfair. It’s unfair, but Pat can’t shake the discomfort he feels. The strangeness with thinking that perhaps he and Brian _are_ becoming friends. And then the complication of — how that shouldn’t feel strange, should it.)

“Thank you for inviting me,” he says, and the prince smiles gently at him, and Pat returns it, and feels — helpless.

  


♚♔♚

  


There’s a lot of flowers, but there’s also men waving trays of baked goods under Pat’s nose and women asking him for his honest opinion on the patterns of their wefts.

Pat watches Prince Brian weave his way throughout the people, speaking to them like they’re old friends, asking them about lambing, about crop rotations — the same way he did at the party after their wedding. Pat’s found him personable when they’re together, of course: he’s clever, and he seems to have a good sense of humor. Pat hasn’t been troubled, spending time with him these last few weeks.

But he’s truly something else entirely in front of a crowd like this. It’s exhausting to watch. It’s incredible to watch. Pat thinks it would be easy to be jealous, or at the very least irritated, but he can’t necessarily name the emotion he feels... the dull ache, the strange emptiness between his ribs.

He thanks a man — _Robert, sire_ — for two gooey, cinnamon pastries and catches up with the prince, who’s squatted down next to a little boy. The boy’s hands are fluttering in front of him while he rants about a swan by a lake, a mean ornery thing that hisses when you get too close, and Prince Brian makes the appropriate _oohs_ and _oh nos_ , and even gasps and covers his mouth when the boy says the swan followed him home and squawked outside of his bedroom window for an hour! ( _Alphas have no time for children_ , Estella reminds Pat. _I’ve no time for children_ , Pat grumbles back, to her displeasure.)

“Matthew, did you hear?” Prince Brian asks, turning to look up at Pat with a carefully controlled expression of dismay on his face — Pat can see the godsdamned sparkle in his eyes. “Swans. Who knew?”

“And geese,” Pat agrees, and the little boy nods furiously. He bends down and — of course, he offers the kid one of the pastries, and passes the other to the prince. “They hold grudges.”

Prince Brian hums agreement and takes the pastry, and Pat doesn’t think when he lifts his hand to his mouth to suck icing off his thumb. Doesn’t think until he notices the way the prince is watching him. Doesn’t think about how the prince licks his bottom lip, tongue moving slow.

“They’re _mean_ ,” the boy grumps, and Pat bites down on his cheek when the prince nearly stumbles onto his ass, jerking towards him in surprise, like he forgot the boy was there.

Whatever — any of that means.

  


♚♔♚

  


The earl of Roselle is a boisterous and broad man who greets them with firm handshakes that turn into overfamiliar hugs. His beard scrapes against Pat’s clean-shaven face as he demands they call him _Oscar_. His manor is understated, a large box-shaped home with roses spilling into the walkway.

Pat had assumed they’d have time to settle, or at least to wash up, but Oscar leads them immediately to the manor’s dining room. He booms something about appetites but Pat’s caught up in the display before them: the food covering nearly every inch of the table is impressive, but what’s moreso are the children sat at nearly every chair around it, eyes fixed attentively on Oscar when he enters the room.

Pat glances at the prince — who’s looking back at him, and gives him the most subtle of shrugs before loudly thanking Oscar for his generosity.

“My dearest is heavy on his feet these days, and won’t be joining us,” Oscar explains as he gestures for them to sit, the prince at the head of the table and Pat at his left. As soon as they’re seated the children begin passing the food, and Pat finally catches a glimpse of their actually being _children_ — one of the girls shoves a plate of roasted potatoes at her brother without his being ready, and he hisses at her when they almost upset and then flicks a bit of rosemary garnish at her face.

Pat half-listens to Prince Brian and Oscar’s conversation about what the village is doing to protect the southern woods from blight, but gives most of his attention to the interactions of the children: Oscar and his absent _dearest_ have 7 of them, each close in age to the next. (Estella’s voice rings sharply in his head about _making oneself available_ and he pays her no heed.) Pat is next to the eldest who is in turn sat next to the youngest, trying to get them to eat what appears to be mashed carrots, and the remainder are carefully feeding themselves, to varying degrees of success. Pat watches a toddler miss their mouth completely and dump broccoli over their shoulder, and Oscar notices his quiet laughter.

“It’s good to see you out of the castle,” he says in between bites of ham, and then he grins at Prince Brian. “None of us were actually crass enough to place bets, of course.”

The prince’s smile is tight when Pat looks to him. “I hadn’t entertained the idea you would be.”

Oscar laughs. Pat knows he’s missed something. The prince asks Oscar to pass him the roast squash, which _held up quite well over the winter, I’d say_. “It did!” Oscar agrees, and when the prince has his serving he offers it across the table to Pat. “You need your strength, sire.”

Pat takes the platter and — frankly doesn’t want any squash, but serves himself anyway before finding a spot on the table to set it down. (Oscar’s eldest is still occupied with the baby.) “Thank… you,” he says, and Oscar nods. 

“You’ve months until quickening, but I can imagine you’re tired. My dearest becomes exhausted the moment it takes! He’s useless until the babe’s born.”

Pat understands several things at once: the earl is certain he and the prince have fucked; he is equally certain Pat is with child; and at some point in the months since his marriage, the nobility has joked about _placing bets_.

Pat’s heat isn’t for several months but perhaps it doesn’t matter with the metswell; perhaps if the prince hadn’t been _kind_ Pat would have spiralled. Done more than paw at himself feebly and crave something more. Perhaps he would be... tired now. Perhaps he would still feel ill, for different reasons altogether.

“Thank you for your discretion,” Prince Brian says quietly, calmly, the weight of his tone cutting through Oscar’s monologue about his husband’s fertility, and Oscar laughs and claps him on the shoulder.

“As I said, we didn’t actually place bets.”

Pat was made aware of how he was set to be little more than chattel; Estella did her job well. The royal family of Baltimere has treated him fairly and equitably — gods, they’ve left him alone, for the most part — and save for the metswell he hasn’t seen any of Estella’s warnings come to fruition. But there’s a sick feeling of indecision within him now: because he wants to be grateful, that the prince isn’t like Oscar, and he should have no reason to be grateful for decency.

The prince demurs when Oscar offers dessert, explaining that they’ve both had a long day, and Oscar summons a footman to see them to their rooms.

They’re left before a set of doors with the assurance their things have been brought up and placed with care within. Pat hesitates with his hand on the doorknob to his room, but he couldn’t say why; perhaps because the prince has made no similar movement to enter his own room. Perhaps because the prince is standing in the hallway, watching him unhappily.

“Sire,” Pat says, and the prince shakes his head.

“This has been… that was inappropriate,” he says, and Pat feels the echo of the words, the prince’s intent, feels the same agreement he felt when they first began their attempt at friendship. “This has been…” He isn’t looking at Pat. He hasn’t looked at him since the dining room. “Patrick’s talented at statecraft.”

Pat’s hand relaxes on the doorknob.

“And Laura’s interests lie in charity, in being a patron of the arts, which suits her. And I do… this.” _Listen to members of the nobility discuss how well you’ve fucked your husband?_ Pat thinks, and the prince continues, “I do this: I pick up the slack, go where I’m needed, parade myself around. I’m useful.” He doesn’t sound bitter, somehow. He’s matter-of-fact. He sounds… tired. “I think in a perfect world I’d have shown some skill at warcraft.”

Pat is torn between the feelings of — of frankly not caring about what the prince is telling him, and wanting to hear something that distracts him. That lets him forget for a little while, his untenable fucking situation. “Is that why you spend so much time in the barracks?”

Prince Brian’s smile is distant. “I, uh, grew up with Jonah actually. That’s all. I’m useless at all of it otherwise.”

He’s silent then and Pat feels the distance between them acutely. The five feet separating them in the hallway may as well be the stretch of coast between Baltimere and Neauxmaine. Several days’ ride. And Pat’s. He’s torn on what he wants — shit, between whether he should say something or simply go to bed. Whether he should try and ameliorate the situation. If he wants to. If there’s anything he can even do.

“And I knew from. I’ve known for years that when I got married, it’d be for — that’s my true worth, not that I’ve reduced myself to anything so coarse, I don’t think.” He sighs and pushes his hair out of his face. “I only want… I want to make something together. I hope that we can make something together.”

Pat’s no virginal bride (much to Estella’s consternation). He’s had his share of partners, as well as considered others — who upon further involvement (furtive kisses, wandering hands) made it clear they were most interested in sharing his heat with him; and he has known since he was young he would be able to marry whomever he damn well pleased, if he wanted to at all. Until the needs of his kingdom superseded his own. Until...

And the thing is, the man before him has had as little choice in all of this as Pat has. The man before him thinks Pat is someone else entirely, besides. 

Pat’s… locked up. His joints are soldered into place. Prince Brian is handsome. He has been nothing but kind. ( _I’ll be kind to you._ ) They’re married, for gods’ sake.

He opens the door to his room and stays where he stands. Lets the door sit open wide. An invitation.

Brian’s expression crumples into something that pierces Pat’s chest, leaves him bleeding between the ribs. Brian works his lips between his teeth and shakes his head once, abortively. “Goodnight, Matthew,” he says, and he disappears into his own room.

And Pat — feels an ass, and goes to bed, and does not sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my favorite thing about this fic is every time i go "hm, that's a little cliche, isn't it," i then immediately write it in. :)

Pat doesn’t have a surfeit of pride.

He’s been frequently proud of his swordsmanship, or of his ability to weasel his way out of latrine duty in the barracks, but his ego has never depended on what others thought of him, or what he could or couldn’t do. (He’s not without shame. He’s felt shame. He feels...)

He feigns sleep in the carriage. It’s unnecessary — the prince doesn’t attempt conversation. Doesn’t look at him, as far as Pat can tell from between his hooded eyes. But then he _is_ asleep. Perhaps the prince gazes at him longingly, considering missed opportunities. Perhaps he’s disappointed in Pat, for — for some reason, for something Pat has no chance of understanding. ( _You were not born into this life, so you’ll need to pay close attention to me — and you must take your cues from those around you who were_.)

They return to Baltimere. The prince holds the carriage door open and offers Pat his hand. Pat could knock him on his ass, and Pat knows he knows that, and that’s why he takes it.

The prince makes himself scarce soon after. Pat could find him in the barracks, probably, lamenting his — his lot in life to Jonah. Picking Pat apart. Noticing whatever it is that he's doing wrong, because even though the prince has never shown any such behavior surely the only reason he would have walked away is because…

He's been nothing but decent. Pat had thought they were becoming friendly with one another. Apparently that is where it ends. Which Pat _should_ be thrilled by, but.

What the fuck is he for, why is he _here_ , if not…

He's exhausted from the trip and night will fall soon besides, but he annoys a stablehand into saddling him a mare named Pinecone (gods forbid he saddle her himself) and as soon as they clear the castle he urges her into a canter, then a gallop. She transitions sloppily enough that he nearly loses his grip on her, but he's not a fucking greenhorn — he keeps his seat and they're off, speeding across the hills rolling out between the castle and the Atalantiac in the distance.

The earth grows softer as they approach the sea and he's ready when he has her slow, keeps his hold just firm enough he's unbothered by the hitch in her gait, and when the dirt turns to sand they walk together along the coast. She's a solid horse, untroubled by the waves a handful of feet from him, and he rubs a hand down her neck. Lets her amble forward as she wishes. Lets her stop and nibble at an outcropping of grass.

The air is brisk here. Reminds him of the beaches of Neauxmaine — and obviously it's the same sea. The same air. If he closes his eyes and breathes he's home, astride his own mare Mabel on watch, perhaps. Or simply _out_ : set to make camp under the stars, to get away from the castle for a night.

It's not yet summer, but the thought is tempting. He could find a suitable space, tie the horse down and use one of his many ridiculous layers as a pillow. Stare up at the moon until the weight of tiredness pulled him under. He's done it before. It's not proper for him now, surely, but what is. The expectations set for him have fallen through. He doesn't know what use he has here.

The earl made Prince Brian uncomfortable and then Pat disappointed him.

Pat dismounts near a collection of driftwood and lets Pinecone graze on a bit of moss, and he sits and removes his boots. Stuffs his fine stockings into the soles and leaves them by the mare, sinking into the sand as he walks towards the black water. It’s much too cold to swim, but he lets the waves lap up over his feet anyway. Savors the sudden chill, the eruption of goose pimples up his shins, extending to his arms and neck.

The water is loud enough he doesn't hear the approach, not until the prince's voice rings out behind him, strident: "Matthew!"

 _Fuck Matthew,_ Pat thinks, and then, _would you have preferred to fuck Matthew_ , nonsensically, and then he turns to see the prince struggling off the back of a horse, Jonah holding the animal steady from the saddle.

The prince is somehow both flushed and pale in the dim evening light, and he runs awkwardly across the sand until he's steps from Pat. He's breathing much too heavily for the distance. "Matthew," he repeats, his eyes too-wide in his face.

"Should I have told you where I was going?" Pat says, and he thinks he manages to keep his tone even.

"Yes!" The prince crows, and then, "No, gods, you don't," and then he frowns and rubs a hand over his face. "Do you want — aren't you cold?"

Pat glances down at the water eddying around his feet, at his sopping trouser legs. "Yeah," he says, but being cold is the point. It's steadying. It's a sharpness he can focus on. And then the horse the prince arrived on snorts. "You rode a horse."

"Of course I," the prince starts, "I was told you'd just _rode off_ , I thought…"

There are a dozen ways he could end that thought and Pat is uncomfortable with the majority of them. He’s not a child, and he’s not irresponsible — for all that he has no purpose other than to be ignored, or paraded around as an example of their alliance. He’s been trained since he was young, and were there not rules about that sort of thing he’d likely be a knight: he was responsible for a prince, for fuck’s sake. (And look where that got him. Responsible for a prince.)

But perhaps he’s. He’s not as brave as he purports to be, because the words — _what do you want from me?_ — stick in his throat. Dry his tongue. WIther inside his mouth.

The prince glances back at Jonah, who’s kept himself at a respectable distance. The prince then stares out at the sea. Looks lost in a way Pat — unkindly, _cruelly_ now, oh he felt so differently just last night — doesn’t feel he’s earned. “I just want you to be happy,” he says, and Pat feels the full-body, shuddering urge to turn towards the ocean and scream.

If he _were_ Matthew, what would make him happy? Does a prince ever feel the need to be useful? ( _In a perfect world I would have shown some talent in warcraft_.) “I’m,” Pat says, and he licks his lips. Follows the prince’s gaze out to the darkened horizon. “I feel like,” he says, and it helps to be looking at the waves. To not feel the prince’s wide gaze on him. “Uh, like I’m a figurehead. That I’m here because I need to be here. I keep trying to find — looking for what I’m supposed to do. But it’s nothing. It’s nothing, apparently, and that’s it. And I’m not — I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Neauxmaine sounds remarkable,” the prince says, and Pat does look at him then. Sees the crease of his brow. The unhappy bend to his lips. “Haven’t you always felt like that?”

“No,” Pat says, true, and the prince’s laugh is a sad sound.

“Fucking — remarkable,” he says, and he looks at Pat for a brief moment, locks eyes with him and appears immeasurably tired. Pat feels the foolish impulse to smooth the wrinkles from his brow. That godsdamned need to be of use.

“Jonah!” The prince turns and hollers, “We’re going to the cabin.”

“Brian,” Jonah replies, sounding aggrieved, but he’s already sliding off of the horse, readying the bridle to hand it off.

Pat watches the prince approach his friend, then shake his head and enter into a low-voiced — it’s an argument, really, with the man. About a cabin, apparently.

Pat’s feet are cold.

He moves out of the water to collect his own mare’s bridle, to check her tack, to do anything that isn’t listen to the conversation happening twenty feet from him. There’s a cabin, and he and the prince will go there, and that’s… gods, the shifting sand under his feet is appropriate. An apt allegory for his life.

“C’mon,” the prince says, and Pat doesn’t startle only because he knows how to keep calm around horses. The prince lays a hand against Pinecone’s flank and grimaces. “I can ride behind you.”

Pat breathes out slowly. “Lot of horses for you today.”

“Fuck me, right,” the prince responds, and Pat huffs a laugh, and mounts the mare before offering the prince his hand.

♚♔♚

He pushes Pinecone to a gallop once they hit the road south of the castle and the prince breathes in sharply behind him, tightening his grip. “Sorry,” Pat mumbles, but he thinks the word is lost to the wind whipping across his face. To the lingering sound of waves crashing against sand.

They ride for what must be an hour and Pat does not pay any mind to the weight of the prince’s arms around his waist, nor the way he breathes against Pat’s ear when he provides the next direction for where they’re headed. They leave one of the packed dirt roads eventually, take a left between two bare and ancient-looking trees, and Pat lets Pinecone trot across the dead grass until a collection of small buildings comes into view: one must be the aforementioned cabin, another some kind of shed. There’s also something that resembles a stable, if you squint.

“We’re here,” the prince says, warmth on the back of Pat’s neck, and when they come to a stop the man — squeezes once, tightens his arms, and then slides off of the mare and. Ha, bends over at the waist, breathing in deeply.

“It was a smooth ride,” Pat says, because he’s an ass, and the prince doesn’t grace him with a response. Pat rubs a hand across Pinecone’s neck, _good girl_. “Where can I put her away?”

The prince eventually looks up and waves haphazardly at the collection of buildings. “There’s a barn.”

Pat looks at the cabin standing at the edge of the untilled field, and at the shed. And what is still likely a stable, dilapidated as it is. “For a cabin?”

“The — there,” the prince says, and gestures again. He looks — for the first time Pat has seen — irritated. “The thing that’s obviously for a horse.”

“Sure,” Pat replies, and he leaves the prince in front of the cabin.

♚♔♚

“Why do you have a cabin? Why is it —” Pat revises his question when he shoulders off and balls up his jacket to swipe the cobwebs from the doorframe, “— _fairly_ well-maintained?”

The prince rummages through a chest at the foot of the bed — the only bed. Well, then — and heaves a great sigh. “Most of this won’t fit us.” He closes the chest and then glances back. “Sorry, I mean. Patrick’s wife comes here a lot, when she’s not in Gloria — her family’s estate. North and inland of here. She’s there now, with their children.”

“I didn’t know he was married.” Pat moves into what serves as the cabin’s kitchen: a wash basin and a butcher’s block atop a set of shelves. The cast iron stove must work double duty for heating and cooking. There’s several sacks on the shelves, and when he pokes at one he hears beans shift inside.

Prince Brian clears his throat. “She’s, uh. It’s easy enough to argue it’s _safer_ elsewhere, with what’s going on down south, but mostly she’s not particularly fond of the constraints of living within the castle. Of being put on display.”

“Oh.” Pat sits back on his heels and stares at the bag of beans. Walks through what he’d need to make dinner — wonders if there’s any salted pork stashed away. Tries not to think about an escape. About... “I didn’t know going home was an option.”

Prince Brian’s silent. Pat feels an itch to turn, to see his expression — to see if he’s hurt. Pat doesn’t want to hurt him, but he wouldn’t mind if he were, which is. Which is a shitty thing to think. To feel.

“Can we pretend,” Prince Brian says, and his voice is thick, “that...”

Pat does turn then, and the prince does look hurt, and Pat hates how it crumples his features, like wet paper. The unhappiness of that expression sits like raw dough in the pit of Pat’s stomach.

"My brother had this cabin built because there was no need for artifice here. No — no titles or politics."

"And no trappings of those politics," Pat says, and the prince nods, and because Pat truly is uncouth, and because he — fuck, he doesn't want the prince to be hurt, he continues, with as much humor as he can manage, "I don't know if it's appropriate for an unwed omega to share a bed with an alpha."

The prince stares at him, and then glances back at the bed, and then, thank gods, he laughs. It's a harsh sound, but it's a laugh. "Oh. Well, damn, you're not wrong. I think there's enough blankets I could cocoon on the floor."

And he gives Pat a tentative smile, and Pat pushes to his feet and claps his hands together, and announces he's gonna try to find salted pork.

♚♔♚

Pat hadn't been serious, but the prince does in fact find a miserable assortment of bedding to pile on the floor into something resembling a bed.

"You don't have..." he mutters, and the prince holds up his hand. Looks up at him from his frankly ridiculous position and waits, as though he's determining if Pat is actually — done, or listening.

"No trappings of politics, Matthew," the prince — Brian, maybe — says, and Pat squashes the urge to roll his eyes.

And then later, when Brian must think him asleep, he hears, "Let me earn my place in your bed," said simply, earnestly, and heat sparks in every one of Pat's extremities, and he doesn't sleep for what must be hours.

♚♔♚

There’s a routine to living at the cabin — structured and familiar, something Pat knows he was missing wandering the halls of the castle, even when Brian took to showing him off. There’s something wholesome, something satisfying to knowing there’s a pot of beans that needs to be rinsed and soaked, firewood that needs to be split, a horse to tend to. He abandons much of the frippery of what he wore when they arrived and that’s a release as well: he doesn’t know how anyone accomplishes much of anything wearing silk. Wearing a fucking _corset_.

Brian shadows him for what feels like the first week: sits and watches while Pat bustles around the kitchen, while he wields an ax and breaks a sweat, while he brushes Pinecone down. He’d be inconspicuous were it not for how Pat feels finely attuned to him, to his every fidget, to the rise and fall of his shoulders when he breathes in the cool spring air. He fills the space around him even if he’s not trying to — and Pat should find it smothering. He should, which is why he passes him the bag of dry beans and their lone pot one morning instead of handling it himself.

“Sort, rinse, soak,” he says, and Brian frowns.

“Sort?”

“Pick out any rocks that’re in there.”

Brian’s frown deepens, but he sits on the edge of the cabin’s front porch and sets to his task with a steady diligence Pat assumes comes from never having done something so menial before.

"Oh," he says ten minutes in, vastly too long a time for the task, and when Pat looks to him he's holding a pebble between his fingers, with an expression on his face like his world’s been upended. "I didn't — actually believe you."

Pat ignores the surge of affection he feels. “Let me know when you need help soaking them.”

“ _When_ ,” Brian mutters, and Pat curls his lips to keep back his smile.

♚♔♚

There’s a pump to the side of the cabin that spits out cool, clean water and a firepit with a spit that needs a scrub-down but is fully functional. Pat passes Brian a scouring brush with the instructions to clean the build-up from the metal, and Brian stares at it in his hand for a long moment before heaving a sigh and doing as he was told. At some point he must have touched his face, because when he returns to the cabin there’s a long streak of grease across his forehead. Pat wrings out a cloth for him, with a bit of soap, and he reaches for his forehead before — shit. Before passing it to him instead.

“Do you need more water?” Brian asks once he’s washed up, nodding towards the pail they keep in the kitchen, and Pat grabs it and maneuvers around him, muttering — godsdamnit, _something_ about taking care of it, thanks though.

There’s a door at the back of the cabin that leads to a privy, that Pat scowls at until Brian pushes past him with a rumbled _I’m not afraid of spiders, let me at it_.

“I’m not _afraid_ —” Pat protests, but by then Brian’s swiping at the corners of the privy with a balled up shirt, huffing, and Pat can’t speak for the sudden fondness he feels welling up in his chest.

There’s a town a short ride down the dirt road, and Brian describes the route while diplomatically refusing to accompany Pat on the trip. “We’ve credit with each of the stores,” he advises, offering Pat an arm when he goes to mount Pinecone — which should be a blow to his ego, which _does_ remind him frustratingly of Estella ( _How would you have been reared, as a prince? What would you be used to?_ ), but is also kind of. Kind of sweet. He does it offhandedly, no intention behind it. The action’s somehow guileless. And then he holds the stirrup steady for Pat and steps back only once he's secure.

"If anyone gives you trouble," he says, wrestling off his ring and holding it up to Pat, "show them this."

"They won't think I mugged you for it?" Pat considers sliding the ring into his pants pocket. And then for reasons he's unsure of, he tries it on his fourth finger instead, the finger Brian wears it on. It's not a perfect fit — Brian's fingers are thicker — but it takes some force to get over his knuckle, which means he won't lose it.

"They know I’ve married," Brian reasons, and he — touches Pat’s thigh, a slow, uh, a slow caress of his fingers, before stepping back from him. “You’ll be fine.”

The back of Pat’s neck is warm. Brian — can that even be considered taking liberties. Such a small thing, a touch.

The trip is uneventful, and no one questions him. The girl at the general store is only just of age, and she leans on the counter as Pat collects what essentials they need: more soap, beans, cured pork. “Are you a prince?” she asks while Pat internally debates the merits of lentils (no soaking) with the versatility of kidney beans.

“No,” he says distractedly, and then, “Yes, um, twice over,” like an ass, and he feels the panic overtake him as he shoves the bag of lentils back onto the shelf. She’s a child. She’s not going to see anything into his misstatement; and even if she did, what would she report? _The prince’s husband is a halfwit._ Nothing actionable.

“Which one are you?” she asks while Pat forces himself to breathe. She’s a literal child (or near enough).

When he deposits his intended purchases on the counter he gives her a smile, and by the way she doesn’t cower he gathers it must look normal enough. “I’m married to His Highness Brian of Baltimere,” he says, and she heaves a great sigh and sways back from the counter.

“Prince Patrick is more handsome. I’m sorry,” she laments, and Pat sucks his cheek between his teeth so he doesn’t do anything so rude as laugh.

“The locals pity me,” he tells Brian when he arrives back at the cabin, offloading one of the bags and passing it to him, relishing the look of confusion on his face. His expression twists and — and looks a bit like it’s on its way to _hurt_ actually, and Pat feels a different kind of panic before he quickly continues, “You’re not as handsome as your brother.”

“Oh,” Brian says blankly, and then he laughs and lifts the bag onto his shoulder. Wholly unnecessary. It weighs perhaps 15 pounds. “ _Oh_ , well. Is that what you think?”

“No,” Pat says, and then his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth because that was — too quick an answer. For the joke. Brian is looking at him, eyes unblinking and unnervingly expressionless, and Pat throws the other bag over his own shoulder and heads towards the front door. “How would I know? He kept himself locked up. You may as well ask me if I find a closed door attractive.”

It’s several moments before he hears Brian following him. “Do you find closed doors attractive, Matthew? Is that why I’m sleeping on the floor?” And there’s just enough humor in his voice that Pat laughs instead of struggling for an answer, and doesn’t dwell on any broader implications of that question.

♚♔♚

Pat's washing up for bed when he realizes Brian never asked for his ring back. He turns it on his finger, watching the green gem catch what little firelight emanates from the dying embers of the stove.

He can’t say he’s never worn anything so rich; his dress for his wedding was absurd. The clothing he’s been paraded around in cost more than the contents of his entire closet back in Neauxmaine — likely more than the contents of his entire room, his sword included. But the ring is unnecessary. Gaudiness for the sheer sake of it.

(He’s being crude. It’s… beautiful, he supposes. He doesn’t know anything about jewelry. It’s simple, the gem in a setting of gold. It’s nothing you could wear if you were used to labor, the gold too soft to withstand much.)

If he thinks about it, Brian’s never been without it. He didn’t ask for it back. Pat could remind him, or could offer it himself. Considers it, while he runs his thumb over the band. There’s no reason for him not to.

He can’t shave — they’ve no razor, and he didn’t think to pick one up in the village — so it takes him little time to finish preparing for bed. Brian’s already turned in, a lump on the floor next to the bed that moves every ten minutes or so as he tries to get comfortable. It can’t be comfortable, but he hasn’t yet complained. 

He’s gone along with most everything Pat has asked (or — well, told, in most instances, really) of him. Even this jaunt into the countryside could be explained away as something Pat asked for. Pat felt aimless in the castle, aimless even with Brian’s invitations — he was a, well, not a pretty face, nobody’d say that. But he was a figurehead. Here, there’s a list of things to be done. There’s a reason for Pat to rise with the sun. He’s considering fixing the stable — most of the wood is sound, and Pat’s no carpenter but he knows how to use a hammer and nail. Maybe he can even find out if _Brian_ does.

He climbs into bed. He can’t fall asleep unless he’s on his left side, which means each night he’s drifted off while looking down at Brian’s lump of blankets. Which means tonight, he’s staring at the back of Brian’s head, the swirl of blond sticking up past one of the quilts.

He runs his thumb over the band on his finger.

It makes him feel — stupidly — like he's an omega from a storybook: wooed by a gift from an alpha, weak-willed enough to be swayed by a trinket into mating. (The end goal is always a good mating, in storybooks. Him and Simone would lounge around and poke fun, narrating specific scenes in lofty voices and falling backwards onto the sofa in the library, holding their hands to their _bosoms_ and sighing. When Simone turned eighteen and was told of her betrothal, they sat together in the library silently, her hands clenched around a storybook. When she met Jenna, she demanded trinkets — and Jenna had smiled dearly, and started with a bracelet.)

“I could’ve done worse,” he says quietly, and Brian hums and shifts, rolling over to blink blearily up at him from the floor.

“Hm?”

Pat’s mind whirs, starts to trip through the trappings of panic — what Brian heard, what Brian _thinks_ he heard — and then Brian’s sleep-soft voice, muffled from his cocoon, says, “You all right?”

And Pat breathes out, quickly calmed by the absence of acknowledgment, and tells him _yes_ , and is struck to find that he means it.

♚♔♚

“It can’t be that hard,” Brian mutters, grabbing the axe off the wall when Pat mentions he needs to resupply their firewood stock.

Pat does believe he’s a quick study — Brian’s watched Pat split logs twice now, sat on the porch under the guise of reading the only book in the cabin (a collection of children’s tales), and made Pat feel on display in a way that should’ve riled him, dug under his skin, but only made him feel… Made the red of his cheeks come from something other than exertion. But — right, he’s a quick study. He doesn’t take a fucking hour to sort beans anymore.

Pat turns the tables on him today, doesn’t even grab the book to give himself an excuse. Sprawls out on the porch and enjoys the cool breeze of midafternoon, slowly turning the ring around his finger, and watches the prince steady a log on the stump before taking a swing. His form’s bad — he’s gonna tire himself out before the task is done, but. But he’s strong. The log splits cleanly.

He pauses partway through the job and strips off his shirt. Uses it to wipe his brow and then glances up at — Pat, who is not staring. Who is enjoying the view from the porch, but not the view of. You can see half the countryside from here. It’s gorgeous in the pale sunlight, a long stretch of blossoming green interspersed with copses of trees, with stone fences separating properties.

Brian isn’t so far away that Pat can’t see the flex of his arms when he raises the axe. The corded stretch of his back when he picks up the split wood to stack next to the cabin.

“You, uh,” Brian says, and Pat was already looking at his face and not the godsdamned gleam of his chest, for fuck’s sake, “you’re better at laundry than me, I think?” He’s sheepish when he passes the shirt over, but there’s a look in his eye like he thinks — like he _knows_ Pat is lying to himself. Like some amount of what’s transpired was on purpose, even if they’ve been nothing but cordial with one another. Cordial and…

(Pat once offered to trade off their sleeping arrangements and Brian insisted on their remaining the same, and Pat had wanted to take offense but Brian was so damn earnest. Had cracked a joke about perhaps blocking Pat’s view of the closed door.)

He returns to chopping. Pat — it’s not like they have an abundance of clothes. He could do laundry. He goes to do laundry.

♚♔♚

“Do you, hm. Do you actually know what you’re doing?”

Pat glances back and Brian’s hands are on his hips, his head tipped to one side. He’s sucking his bottom lip between his teeth and he only stops to frown.

“Sorry, I couldn’t figure out how to make that sound less accusatory. But — _do_ you?”

“How hard can it be?” Pat responds, rather than _Of course not_. He looks down at his collected supplies — lumber, nails, a hammer he’d found under the bed of all places — and then back up at the shabby stable that he has a hope to repair. Pinecone is tied up in front of the house, and even she’d looked skeptical of him when he’d moved her that morning. “I’m not feeling particularly supported.”

From behind him, Brian snickers. “I’m going to leave you to it. I’ve errands to run in town.”

Pat stands up and turns to him, wiping his hand across his brow. “D’you want me to go? Save you the ride?”

“I’m not letting you get out of the mess you’ve made,” Brian replies warmly, a tone that hits Pat in the chest and worms its way between his ribs. “I have high expectations.”

“Oh fuck you,” Pat hits back — and then freezes up for a beat, because perhaps that’s too familiar. Perhaps the time they’ve spent here hasn’t broken anything down between them, let alone built it back up into something new. Something resembling a friendship. Something resembling…

The apology is halfway out of Pat’s mouth when he realizes Brian is laughing, Brian’s expression is — fond, maybe. Some kind of delighted in Pat’s response.

“ _High expectations_ ,” he repeats, and he grabs a rucksack he’d left on the porch and approaches Pinecone like she’s a bear.

♚♔♚

“We’re not doing anything today,” Brian announces during breakfast: grits he stirred attentively over the stove. (He didn’t know how to make them a few weeks ago. He hasn’t burnt them in days. Every time, Pat tells him he’s proud of him and means it, though he means to tease him as well, and Brian heaves the most put-upon sigh.)

Pat scrapes his spoon around the edges of his bowl and lifts his eyebrows, without looking up at him. “Okay?”

“We _are_ doing something today,” Brian clarifies, and Pat feels the edges of his mouth turning up in a smile, “but nothing around the cabin. I want to show you the countryside. There’s a river.”

“The water will be too cold to swim.” Pat takes both their bowls and sets to cleaning them in the basin in the kitchen.

“We’re not swimming. We’re.” Pat looks back at him, and there’s. There’s pink to his cheeks. Pat’s hands still and he follows the color down Brian’s jaw and neck, to where it disappears under the collar of his shirt. He swallows and looks back at Brian’s face. “We’re going to walk and we’re going to sit and we’re going to eat. Enjoy each other’s company.”

Pat finishes washing the bowls while he tries to come up with a response because he’s not sure how to put into words how charmed he is by the suggestion, or by Brian’s insistence upon it. “A picnic?” he eventually says, an obvious question, and Brian mutters _I bought a basket_ and Pat bites down on his bottom lip.

During one of his own trips to the village Brian bought a basket, and he bought an abundance of food and drink to go in that basket — and there’s also a godsdamned red gingham blanket. Brian insists on carrying it when they head out, the late morning air crisp but not cold, even though Pat offered before they left, and again when they hit the trees at the edge of the cabin’s clearing.

“I can manage,” Brian persists, and he clambers deftly over a fallen tree trunk as though to prove his point. “I don’t have the same training as you or Jonah, but I’m not a weakling. I could clear you with a jump, do you know that?”

Pat isn’t full well going to say he disbelieves him, but his expression must say it for him.

“When we get to the river, I’ll show you,” Brian promises, and Pat shows his palms in truce.

It’s not a long walk, only 20 minutes even meandering as they are, with Brian shifting the basket between his hands and Pat trying not to name each plant they come across. (His mother has always loved horticulture; she would take him and his sister out on day-long hikes and point out each bit of greenery, and when Rhiannon complained about not needing to know it, Mother convinced her that perhaps one day she would be stationed in the woods and starving, and know what to eat that wouldn’t kill her, or give her the shits.) Brian asks how he knows what he does, and Pat — tries to explain without showing his whole ass.

“My… governess,” Pat offers, and when Brian seems to buy it — he likely had a governess. Princes have governesses, right? — he talks through the story, through a distorted version of his childhood memories, where Rhiannon was his governess’s daughter and his parents died when he was young.

Brian rolls his shoulders and moves the basket to his other hand, and Pat is going to ask if he’s _sure_ he doesn’t want Pat to take a turn when he says, “Do you remember them? Your parents.” 

Pat has very few memories of the king and queen. They died of illness when he was young, gods, when Simone and Matthew were _younger_ ; Simone wasn’t yet old enough to take the throne. The council ruled Neauxmaine jointly until Simone was of age. She would share snippets with him, a memory of her mother tucking her in to bed at night, singing sweetly; or of her father letting her sit on his lap during council meetings, asking her opinion quietly even if she replied back with nonsense.

“No,” he replies, and does quick math in his head, hopefully correctly, “I was only four, I remember small things. My mother’s perfume.” His mother does not wear perfume, specifically calls it bear-attractor, but it seems like something a queen would do. “My father’s beard.” He _does_ remember the king’s beard; his father has been clean shaven every day of his life, and the king’s beard was, frankly, inspiring.

Brian chuckles and kicks a rock out of his path. “Every year that passes I forget a little more about my dad,” he says, and Pat wants to reach out to him, wants to touch his arm, draw him to him, _something_ — and then he feels sick. He almost stops walking, has to force his legs to move. Has to swallow around the bitterness in his throat.

His parents are alive. He’s… he’s lied a lot to Brian, but he hates himself for this one.

He clears his throat. “Almost there?” he asks, and Brian must assume he’s simply uncomfortable with the emotion of the subject, because he lets him change it.

♚♔♚

Pat’s settled onto the blanket and taken each of the items Brian’s passed him, spread them out between them, before he realizes this is — oh. Well.

Brian’s poured wine into one of the simple mugs from the cabin and is offering it to him, and it’s a simple mug, but it’s wine. Wine and smoked meat and cheese, and bread that still smells fresh enough from Brian’s trek into town the day before, and a collection of candied fruit that even for a prince must have cost him dearly in early spring.

Brian’s smiling at him, a small thing that softens his eyes.

This is _romantic_ , isn’t it.

Pat takes the wine and then turns his face into the breeze, so he can blame the color in his cheeks on the cold.

“Thanks for humoring me,” Brian says. “I know there’s probably a dozen things you could be doing around the cabin now. Something to chop. Or attempt to repair.”

“The stable looks good,” Pat mutters, because it _does_ — or at least, it looks better than it did, and it’s, well, _stable_ as it were — and sets to assembling a sandwich.

“It does look good,” Brian says, and he leans back on the blanket and pops a piece of fruit into his mouth. “You’re skilled with your hands.”

Pat stares at him fiercely, but his expression doesn’t change as he chews, and Pat has — no reason to think he’s being... Is it crude if one’s married? Is it intentional in the first place? Brian’s made no advances, even if this entire venture is suspect, and Pat has no reason to assume Brian wants anything to do with him. ( _I’ll earn my place in your bed_ , he had said. Fuck’s sake.)

“Where did you learn it?” Brian continues, voice sly and supple, and Pat remembers Simone’s handmaiden, Clementine, and how reactive she’d been; and Oliver, a member of the guard, and how he’d gasped.

He bites into his sandwich. He’s red because of the fucking wind.

He’s _not_ imagining Brian’s laughter.

♚♔♚

There’s two horses tied up next to Pinecone on their return, and Brian’s easy stroll falters, his voice dying mid-laugh at Pat’s story about Simone’s attempts at befriending the barn cats, and how they’d scratch up her silk skirts.

Jonah’s sitting on the porch steps and he gives a wave, and as they approach Pat can see the tight expression on his face. “Your Royal Highnesses,” he says, and Pat can’t control the way his face twists at the title even now, but at least this time Brian shares in his discomfort.

“Ugh, Jonah,” he says, and he passes the man the picnic basket before heading inside. Jonah blinks down at it and Pat ignores the flash of amused annoyance he feels — sure, _Jonah_ can carry it — before waving Jonah into the cabin before him.

“Did you want a break from castle life too?” Pat asks as Jonah sets the basket down on the meager kitchen counter, as Brian stalks across the room towards one of the chairs and slumps into it. He’s got a frown on his face like he already knows why Jonah’s come.

Jonah gives Pat — a strange look, eyes narrowed, before joining Brian in the other chair. Which leaves Pat either the bed or the chest at its foot. He begins to unpack the remnants of their picnic instead. His throat feels tight.

“Richemonte is pressing forward,” he explains, and when Pat glances back at them, Brian’s expression is strangely lighter. And then, when Jonah adds, “And I’ve intelligence gathered concerning possible subterfuge,” it collapses in on itself, for only a moment, before Brian looks blank.

“Jonah,” he says, in a tone Pat’s never heard before. Pat stills, hands grasping the gingham blanket, and he feels like he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be. Like an intruder. (He _is_. Potential subterfuge indeed. Fuck, if only they knew.)

Jonah doesn’t reply, not audibly, and Pat wants to look, to try and divine what the hell is passing between them, but then Brian’s saying in that same tone, “Matthew, would you excuse us?” and when Pat glances up, startled, Brian is nearly frogmarching Jonah out of the cabin, the door thudding shut behind them.

Pat can see them out the window. He can’t hear a thing, but Jonah’s speaking in a rush and Brian’s clearly disagreeing, _yelling_ at him, maybe, one hand thrown out to his side, and then Jonah’s leaning in, holding him by the shoulders, and Brian sags.

Brian sags, and Jonah touches his face and Brian looks up at him, and Pat busies himself with the basket. Gods know if he leaves the food where it is, they’ll get ants. Gods know Brian and Jonah have known each other for years, decades, and perhaps there’s an explanation for Brian’s unwillingness to bed him beyond his apparent chivalrous nature. (He took Pat on a fucking picnic. He ran off to be with Jonah the day Pat arrived in Baltimere. He’s made… overtures.) But when he looks up Jonah’s standing alone, and Brian’s storming back into the cabin.

“We’re returning to the castle tomorrow,” he snaps before hesitating, closing his eyes and breathing in as though trying to ground himself. “I’m sorry, it’s. The situation is more dire than I expected. It’s not safe here.”

There’s not much in the cabin to pack up. What they’ve accumulated they could leave, or share between the two horses. “We could make it back tonight,” Pat says, and Brian shakes his head.

“Let’s enjoy ourselves for one last night, huh?” There’s a finality to his tone that would unsettle Pat if he let it, if he were the anxious sort ( _ha_ , he’s going to be replaying it for the next day, at least), and then Brian breathes out in a rush and rolls his shoulders back, and joins Pat at the basket. “I told Jonah we had leftovers and he said they don’t feed him enough at the barracks.”

It’s a lie. Pat — doesn’t know how to call him on it. He knocks their shoulders together instead, as though he can rediscover the simple camaraderie they’d shared only hours ago, and though Brian tenses at first, he. He leans against Pat. Leans into him. Stays there, while Pat’s hands falter on the cups.

♚♔♚

At dusk they set a fire underneath the spit and Pat sets to cooking up the last of their prepared beans, to use them up and supplement the remains of their picnic. Brian’s digging about in the cabin for gods know what and Jonah’s sprawled out on the dirt, watching the last vestiges of the sun over the horizon.

“Brian says you’ve been taking care of him out here,” he says, and Pat doubts that; unless Brian was shouting it at him, earlier.

The hours between Jonah’s arrival and dinner had been… tense, in a word. Jonah had been silent mostly, but he’d been watching Brian, and Brian had responded to the attention with an increasingly sullen mood. Brusque, when Pat tried to talk to him. Pat had felt wrongfooted with both of them, finally left the cabin under the guise of tending to Pinecone, who was perfectly fine but who also wasn’t clearly angry and pretending not to be.

When he’d returned, it was to a bitten-off conversation, Brian red-faced, his hands in fists at his sides, and Jonah deadly calm. Pat busied himself with collecting wood — something, fuck, physical so he wouldn’t try and divine what was going on between them. So he wouldn’t begin to... _assume_.

Pat tests the beans and pulls a face when they’re still a little hard. “He’s done his share.”

Jonah huffs a laugh and leans forward, and as he opens his mouth several things happen at once:

Jonah says, “Where did you learn all of this?” in a tone like he won’t believe whatever answer Pat gives him;

Brian bursts from the cabin wielding a guitar, a strained smile on his face like he’ll be damned if he doesn’t enjoy himself, and the two of them, too;

and Pat hears a high-pitched whistling sound, something cutting through the air from behind him.

Brian reels back, a guttural cry punched out of him as he falls, the guitar slipping from his grip as the arrow strikes him. Jonah gives a shout and Pat feels his stomach drop, his throat close. His mind goes starkly blank, instead of screaming. Singly-focused. The arrow came from the woods. There’s a rustle in one of the trees.

Brian always leaves the ax at the stump they use to chop wood. Pat’s lectured him about it before, properly caring for their tools, but Brian still does it — and Pat yanks it out of the stump as he sprints towards the woods. Jonah will care to Brian, if. If Brian’s.

He hears Jonah shout, 'What are you — no, p —!" and Pat’s at the treeline, and he can see a hooded figure in front of him, crashing through the undergrowth, stealthy enough to sneak up on them but shit at a clean escape.

He’s not going to catch up with them, their lead too great even with Pat’s familiarity, having traversed these woods mere hours before, but Pat’s father insisted he learn more than a sword, and he's trained since he was a child — he’s used to the weight of the ax in his hand. He's used to the weight and Brian screamed and fell, he fell and —

What took twenty minutes during their walk earlier is nothing now at the speed they’re both going, and when Pat clears the trees he sees the person lit by the moon — a scout, maybe, maybe they’d not intended to take a shot, maybe they were merely info-gathering and saw an opportunity too good to ignore — furiously pushing at a canoe, already most of the way back into the river, and Pat takes a steadying breath through the burning in his chest and launches the ax towards them.

It hits them in the shoulder with a thud and they collapse onto the sand with a cry, and Pat’s on them, one hand at their collar and the other balled into a fist, colliding with their jaw as they try and scramble away from him, batting uselessly at him with one arm while the other hangs limp. Brian’s — Brian is all right, surely, he's not choking on his own blood like the scout, he's not clinging to Jonah as his heart struggles to beat, and if he is…

Pat grabs the ax from where it fell.

♚♔♚

He sits beside the canoe and rubs the strap from the scout's satchel between his thumb and forefinger. He's glanced through the contents and it's inflammatory enough — a letter bearing the king of Richemonte's seal. A half-finished map of the river's route, with notes in the margins about water depth. The ease with which larger boats could pass along the water.

He hasn't returned to the cabin because if he remains here, Brian is alive. Brian is as Pat remembers him, sitting next to him on a blanket on the riverbank, looking at him as though he's. As though perhaps…

Pat circles his hand around the band on his wrist. He doesn’t think of it much, anymore. He’s used to wearing it. He’ll need to wear it for a year of mourning and then he can remove it, if he likes. He’ll be sent back to Neauxmaine a widower, which would have seemed a freedom a month ago. No longer forced into this charade. To — pretend he enjoys Brian’s company —

Pat presses his palms against his eyes. They're filthy, sticky with — with blood, because he. He killed someone, who was likely here only by circumstance. Who probably disobeyed orders, saw an opportunity, and took it. And he... And the pressure is something to focus on, the cascading white lights behind his eyes a distraction, and he tries to force a rhythm to his breathing, to the erratic shudder of his chest.

Brian is not dead. He is not grievously wounded. He is sitting outside the cabin, annoyed at Pat's heroism, trying to convince Jonah he's fine. He's —

At the treeline, red-faced and body shuddering from the run, “I’m not — fucking _stamina_ ,” he whines, and Pat staggers to his feet, feels equally winded though he’s been on his ass for, gods, half an hour, and.

They’ve not touched, beyond the necessary: holding hands and arms when they were married; the awkward press of the ride to the cabin; the odd brush of their hands during the day. They’ve not touched.

Brian’s in his arms and he's not sure who moved first. Who reached for whom. Brian’s hands are twisting in the back of his shirt, and if Pat moved his head an inch, _an inch_ , his mouth would brush against. Against Brian’s cheek. His temple, when Brian leans forward, dropping his head on Pat’s shoulder.

“Gods, you asshole,” Brian grouses and Pat closes his eyes. Feels the weight of him, the firm press of his chest, the strength of his grip. “You unbelievable — I can’t believe you. Just because you — just because you know what you’re doing doesn’t mean — oh, fuck, are you, is this _yours_ —” Because obviously there’s the blood, the blood that. Shit.

There’s the blood, and Pat doesn’t want him to see, keeps him close, holds him — he couldn’t imagine this, the rabbit-fast beat of his worried heart, Brian is real and safe, and he can’t see what Pat’s —

“I thought you’d been hit.” The hair at the base of Brian’s head is soft against Pat’s fingers. His chest rises and falls and Pat feels every breath, pressed together as they are, and Pat just killed someone, something he's trained for since he was a child — protecting a member of the royal family, pursuing the enemy, killing if necessary. It likely wasn't necessary. Brian’s okay. Brian’s — gods, bitching at him. And Pat feels — ill. He knows he'd do it again. He’d take up an ax or a sword, he’d. "I thought you'd."

Brian pulls away enough that they can look each other in the eye. He reaches back and grabs Pat's hand, moves it to his shoulder: Pat can feel the tear in his shirt, the raised skin where the arrow skimmed him. "They were a poor shot."

"They're dead now," Pat says, as though it's a joke. Brian had been grazed. If they had only been a bit better — he's conversant with a bow, knows how easy it is to fuck up, and if they'd only… "I, there’s a satchel, they were sent from Richemonte —”

And Brian touches his face, smoothes his thumb over Pat's cheek, startling him into silence. "Jonah can handle it… Matthew. Let's get you cleaned up," he says, and leads Pat back, hands tight around each other.

♚♔♚

Pat doesn’t remember the walk back to the cabin, or going inside, or Brian positioning him next to the basin at the sink. His fingers struggle with the ties on his shirt until Brian gently pushes them away, taking over. Some part of Pat’s overwhelmed mind finds that funny, _the first time your husband undresses you_ , but his laughter comes out thick and muddled, and Brian stops what he’s doing and presses his palm flat against Pat’s bare chest. Steadying. Steadying, and incendiary — so much contact after months of none.

“It’s too late to return to Baltimere tonight,” Brian says quietly. Pat thinks Brian and Jonah spoke before they entered the cabin, Brian sending Jonah towards the riverbank while he shepherded Pat inside.

“I can take first watch,” Pat replies, and Brian’s answering laugh is high and disbelieving.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. We’ll finish here and you’ll eat if you can, and you’ll go to bed.” His tone’s steely, authoritative, and Pat thinks he would usually push back but it’s reassuring now, it settles on his shoulders like a heavy blanket, not having to make a decision. Being told what to do, when the last thing he chose by himself was...

Pat doesn’t manage to eat. Brian passes him a bowl of meat and beans and Pat stares down at it without any appetite. Brian takes it back after some passage of time, and brushes his fingers through Pat’s hair, tipping his head back just enough to catch his eye. “Let’s turn in,” he says, the softest of orders, and Pat nods hazily and then slumps into bed while Brian carefully moves about the cabin, collecting their things in preparation for tomorrow.

Pat isn’t sure he sleeps — he drifts, certainly, but his hands itch as though there’s still dried blood in the lines of his skin, under his fingernails, and when Brian’s quiet it’s easy for his mind to imagine the arrow hitting its mark. That Pat’s hallucinated the evening, that Brian was struck and is lying outside now, stiff as a board.

He rolls over in bed to find him as reassurance, huddled in his burrow of blankets, and Brian’s watching him in turn, in the low light of the moon coming in through the window. His hair’s a mess, like he tried to sleep and tossed and turned instead. His eyes are dark, tired and sunken, and Pat thinks about running his thumb over the soft, bruised skin. About sliding that same thumb down the curve of his nose, to trace his upper lip.

They’ve touched more today than they have since they were wed.

“I should’ve known,” he whispers, and Brian’s eyes narrow, his forehead furrowing. “I should’ve known we were being watched.”

He knows it’s absurd, just as he knows it’s true. He should have known. He’s spent his whole life having it drilled into his head: an awareness of his surroundings to ensure the safety of the royal family — of Matthew. His prince.

 _I’m supposed to protect my prince_ , Pat thinks stupidly, and his very ribs ache.

Brian is decent. Which — is damning with faint praise, he’s so much more than... He’s kind. Funny. He’s — fuck. He’s handsome in a way that makes Pat’s palms sweat. He’s damnably polite. He’s watching Pat with a look that Pat can’t read, as though he thinks Pat is as frustratingly unknowable as he himself is.

“If you’d,” gods, it’s difficult to work his tongue and teeth around the words, “if you’d _died_ , Brian,” he manages, and Brian moves quickly out of his blankets, reaching for Pat’s shoulder, and Pat catches his hand before he touches him. Before Brian can console him, as though they were friends. As though— fuck. _Fuck_ , and Pat kisses his palm, watching how Brian’s lower lip quivers when he breathes in sharply. When he stumbles over _Matthew_.

Brian doesn’t push against Pat’s grip. Keeps his hand straight, letting Pat draw it away from his face, letting Pat press his thumb into the curve of Brian’s palm, and that’s… all. Brian doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move. Watches Pat with eyes wide enough to catch the moonlight filtered through the cabin’s threadbare curtains. Doesn’t — fucking do anything, which is kind, Pat knows. Which is — polite, not responding to Pat making a scene, and so godsdamned maddening —

“I don’t — I don’t understand,” he bites out, jaw clenching, and Brian finally _emotes_ , confusion flitting across his face.

“What do you mean —”

What _does_ he mean? What’s led him here, to this overreaction — was it the long, sick moment he was certain Brian was dead, or the too-fast second when he lodged the ax in the scout’s throat? Was it earlier, when he watched Jonah and Brian, and things became strange between them for the first time in weeks?

“Is it, shit, is it Jonah?” It isn’t. He knows in his heart it isn’t, that if there’s a problem it’s _him_ , but. “I saw the two of you and I know you dismissed the — and look, I don’t _care_ , truly, if you’d just tell me the fucking truth, so I’m not in this, ha, this _limbo_ —”

“No, M-Matthew, I’m not, we’re not, we’ve never been, that’s not the —”

“Then what?” Pat’s — shit, he’s still holding Brian’s hand, and he drops it so he can drag his fingers through his hair, so he can concentrate on something that isn’t how he’s exposed himself, how he’s forced himself to the edge of this cliff and Brian’s looking at him like a spooked mare, _gods_ , he’s an idiot. “Then we’ve — I thought, with everything, with the fucking _picnic_ , Brian, I thought we.”

Brian’s silent and Pat closes his eyes. He’s embarrassing himself.

(Estella had never said anything about what would happen if Pat — found him charming. Enjoyed his presence. _Wanted_ him, in a way she would likely find unbecoming for a wedded couple... About what would happen if the prince didn’t want to fuck him, let alone love...)

“Then what?” he asks again, and he hates the quake in his voice. Hates himself, a whole-body feeling, for baring his naive heart and ruining what they’ve managed to build here, away from expectations.

(Hates himself, for wanting love.)

“I wanted to know you,” Brian says, saving Pat from his foolhardy rambling, from his godsdamned bleeding heart, and he lifts his hand again, slowly, like he’s waiting for Pat to stop him. “I wanted to know you…” He touches Pat’s shoulder, then his neck, sliding his thumb along his jaw. “Matthew.”

Oh. Oh, how Pat hates himself for that, too. _Matthew_.

“I wanted this to be more than inevitable,” Brian says, and Pat thinks of — of Brian promising to be kind. Wanting to, fuck, earn his place in Pat’s bed. Oh, Pat’s a fool, and Brian’s looking at him with sadness, with pain in his eyes. “I never wanted you to feel like you owed me anything, Matthew. As though you were trapped.”

“I don’t feel trapped,” Pat says, and oh, it’s a lie, because of course he does, but not for the reasons Brian assumes. He was trapped as soon as Matthew disappeared, as soon as Simone proposed her plan. He was trapped when Brian first smiled at him, when he first made Brian laugh. When he thought Brian had died and didn’t want the freedom that came with it.

“Brian, I don’t feel trapped,” he lies, and Brian scrabbles up onto his knees, his hand jostling Pat’s head, and it’s awkward, Brian half a head lower than him on the floor, but who — who the fuck cares, because Brian leans in and kisses him.

Pat has no memory of the kiss they shared when they were married. His memories of the entire day are scattershot and plagued by the shame and anger he felt the following morning when he’d found out he’d been drugged — shit. Shit, he won’t think of that now, he won’t, nor will he think of how he’s a fucking liar, because gods —

Brian’s lips are dry. Chapped. He smells just faintly of the river — wet sand and the spring breeze. 

Pat grabs at the collar of Brian’s shirt, his knuckles pressed to his sleep-warm skin, and when Brian opens his mouth to breathe Pat licks in, and Brian jerks in surprise and _shit_ —

Pat tumbles forward and Brian lets out a bark of laughter followed immediately by a grunt as Pat collides with him — “Ow, _fuck_!” — and Pat scrambles up on hands and knees, or as well as he can with the lumpiness of Brian’s godsdamned pillow nest ballooning around them. Which means Brian is laid out under him, a pained smile on his face, and before Pat can ask him if he’s all right, he closes his eyes and throws a hand to his forehead, grimacing dramatically.

“You kneed me in the dick,” he says plainly — and Pat has no control over the horrified laugh that bursts out of him.

“That’s,” Pat says, unable to stop the, gods, the giggling, when faced with something terrible and circumstantially, ah, unfortuitous, fuck’s sake, on top of the absolute emotional whirlwind of the day — and it’s not like he can _check Brian for injuries_ , rummage around in his trousers for bruising, “inappropriate contact for an unwed omega, uh, like myself.”

Brian blinks up at him for a long minute in confusion and then he covers his face with his hand as the terms of their initial agreement come to him, and the both of them are still laughing when Jonah hollers through the door to ask them if any of the thudding was another failed attempt from Richemonte — which shouldn't be funny, but in their combined exhaustion very much is.

“You really did knee me in the dick,” Brian intones when they’ve quieted.

Pat huffs a laugh and grabs hold of the bedframe to help himself up, and stills when Brian presses a hand flat against his chest.

He looks… soft, in the moonlight. (He always looks soft. Brian may argue otherwise, but Pat’s not convinced he’s ever held a sword.) He’s touchable — and there are possibilities there, a sudden spiral of opportunities Pat hadn’t assumed he’d ever have opening up to him. Opportunities he wasn’t sure he’d wanted in the first place.

“The bed’s more comfortable,” he says, too tired to be embarrassed, to second-guess himself, and Brian nods and... Joins him for the first time. Lays down and tugs the covers up over the both of them as the day’s exhaustion blankets Pat like another layer, and nudges their knees together.

“Deadly weapon,” Brian mutters, and Pat closes his eyes and laughs, and Brian touches his face, his neck. Presses a kiss to Pat’s chin. Loops his arm around Pat’s chest and curls his fingers, five points of pressure against Pat’s back.

It’s — overwhelming. A fucking sea change, and Pat wants, he _wants_ , and it’s truly some kind of cosmic joke that his body weighs thirteen tons, each of his arms another two. “Brian,” he says, quiet between them, and Brian hums against his skin, and Pat slips away between slow kisses.

♚♔♚

“ _Matthew_ ,” Brian says firmly, and when Pat blinks awake the bed next to him is empty, and Brian and Jonah are — arguing? In front of the door. Tension radiates between them, and Pat’s head is still too fuzzy to decode it.

“Matthew,” Jonah says, as though he’s conceding some point, are they… fighting? And then Brian waves a dismissive hand at him and turns towards Pat and — even with sleep in his eyes, Pat can see the softness of his smile.

“I wanted to let you sleep. But we’ll head out as soon as you’re ready.”

Pat rubs a hand across his face and takes a steadying breath, orienting himself: they’re headed back to Baltimere because it’s not safe here. Something is wrong between Brian and Jonah, and it involves Pat to some degree. The situation would likely only be escalated were Pat to tell Jonah to fuck off so he can kiss his husband. “I’ll be ready in five.”

“You could learn a thing or two from him,” Jonah mutters and Brian shoots him a sour look before Jonah exits the cabin.

Pat rises and does a quick search for where Brian (Jonah?) has already packed his things — likely in the rucksack by the door. Brian’s still standing there, and when Pat rifles through the bag for pants he glances up at him. Brian’s working his lip between his teeth.

“Everything okay?” he asks, and Brian blinks slowly and then turns to him with a smile that Pat feels like a solid strike to his chest.

“Yes,” Brian says, and Pat’s — not sure he believes him, _is_ sure there’s something unspoken going on, and that low thrum of anxiety is going to buzz about his brain, will sit sick and heavy at the back of his throat. ( _If he knew you were lying to him, would he look at you like that?_ ) But for now — gods, for now it’s easy to accept it at face value, and to open the door and gesture Brian towards the porch, and smile at the way his expression bends disbelieving.

“I need to change.”

“I’m — _really_.”

And Brian has — said some real _shit_ to Pat, words that have stalled Pat’s heart, made his hands sweat, and so it’s with a quick gleeful thrill that Pat tells him, “We don’t have enough time for you to see me naked,” and shuts the door in Brian’s stunned ( _intrigued_ ) face with a swallowed laugh.

♚♔♚

Jonah hesitates, his sword level with Pat’s throat.

“Fuck,” Pat grits out, and Jonah laughs at him as he lowers his blade and chides, “You went soft while you were honeymooning.”

Pat thinks of the weight of the ax in his hand and the fear in the scout’s eyes, and he tells Jonah he’s probably right.

It’s been six days since their return. Since Brian was immediately shepherded away behind closed doors to discuss the escalating war with Richemonte, only to be seen in passing — in the hallways, surrounded by members of the council; or during breakfast, when it’s frequently clear he’s barely slept. He looks worn through to his bones, and the smiles he shares with Pat over his untouched plate are too-tight. Pat’s begun to wish in his more bitter moments that he’d done — something more, when they’d had the time, the _privacy_ to do so. It’s some ridiculous joke that he’s not even heard the door to Brian’s bedroom open. It’s some ridiculous joke that now he finally wants…

It’s been six days since Pat has had to adjust to sleeping — not alone, the bed was entirely his in the cabin until that final night, but by himself, without the susurrations of Brian an arm’s length away. Since Pat has had to contend with the dreams, where the scout’s aim was true. Where he returns to the cabin, blood on his hands (he — killed someone), and Brian is laid out on the cabin porch, staring unseeingly up at the sky.

It’s also been six days since Jonah was assigned as Pat’s minder. Of course no one — especially not Brian nor Jonah — has said as much, that it’s an assignment, but the man dogs Pat’s every step. If Pat ever again has a moment of Brian’s time unaccompanied, his breathless godsdamned fantasies have been usurped by the need to present his case for being perfectly fucking able to take care of himself, as previously evidenced.

Pat looks forward to the afternoons when he stalks off to the training grounds, Jonah following behind him like a loyal hound (which is — unfair of Pat, to think). Laura often joins them, not to fight but to spectate, looking up from her book to holler disparagement at whomever appears to be losing.

"He could've taken your head clean off," she calls today from where she's sat herself underneath the only tree in the courtyard, a slim novel open on her lap. (Pat — doesn’t think about anything about the thought of... About that kind of violence. He did what he had to do.)

Pat waves at her dismissively even while Jonah agrees, and she hollers, "I saw it, Matthew! You were risking a beheading!” and Pat huffs a laugh as he holds his blade back up (not — thinking about it) and squares off against Jonah again.

He manages to actually disarm Jonah this time, his sword flying from his hand to slide under the courtyard fence, and Pat ignores Jonah’s accusation of dirty tricks (Pat hadn’t actually tripped him, and besides, Jonah should be more alert after sparring with him for a week) to fetch it and —

Brian’s crouched over, hand around the hilt of Jonah’s sword, and when he stands he keeps it at his side. “Hey.” He looks exhausted, sunken eyes and sallow skin, as though he hasn’t seen the sun since they returned — and somehow he’s still the best thing Pat’s seen since the last time they caught eyes in the hall, two godsdamned days ago.

“Hey, stranger,” Pat says, and he hears his voice go soft, and even then Brian grimaces and blows out a laugh.

“Suppose I deserve that,” he replies, and he clambers up and over the fence awkwardly enough that Pat has a lightning quick, terrifying version of him falling and skewering himself with Jonah’s sword; and then he’s standing in the courtyard looking at Pat with a gentle smile, and Pat desperately wants to touch him. To run his fingers along the edge of his chapped lips.

“Can I cut in?” Brian asks, and he moves to replace Jonah in the courtyard. Jonah knocks their shoulders together before joining Laura under the tree, and Pat turns to his husband and taps their swords together — and he laughs when Brian almost loses his grip on his.

"This should be quick,” Pat says, and Brian purses his lips and puts his weight on his back foot. (He looks… tired. He looks _good_. Pat isn’t sure there’s any way he wouldn’t, right now, after so many godsdamned days apart.)

“Bet you’re used to that from Brian!” Jonah shouts and Laura barks out a laugh and Pat feels his cheeks go hot (he very much _isn’t_ , Jonah, for gods’ sakes) — and Brian takes advantage of his distraction and lunges towards him.

And, well. It is quick, Brian’s capitalizing on Jonah’s crudeness notwithstanding.

Brian’s fast, and Pat knows he’d argue he’s limber, but he doesn’t know how to react on his feet — doesn’t know how to rebalance himself when Pat feints blocking then smacks the broad side of his practice sword against Brian’s ribs. With the air knocked out of him and the momentum from the hit, it’s simple to give his backside a push and let him tumble onto the dirt.

Pat doesn’t laugh, sucking his lips back between his teeth, but Laura and Jonah make no effort not to.

“Fuck you,” Brian mutters from the ground, and when he sticks his hand out Pat hauls him up, then brushes dust from his front. And then pauses, because his hands are spread across Brian’s chest, and Brian’s scowling up at him but Pat can see the humor around the edges of his mouth, the way he’s fighting off a smile.

“You’re sleep-deprived,” Pat says, and Brian blinks languidly as though to prove his point — and then he sways a bit, because he _is_ sleep-deprived, actually, and Pat steadies him with a hand curled around his shoulder. “When was the last time you slept?”

“Last night,” Brian insists, and then he pushes his hair out of his face and laughs, just hoarse enough that Pat wants to make Jonah bring him tea. “How _long_ I slept, now, that’s. That’s different.”

It would be inappropriate to touch Brian how he wants to, standing in the courtyard. _Unseemly_ , Estella says in his head, to cup Brian’s face in his hands, to curl his thumbs over the curve of Brian’s cheeks, to rest them in the bruises under his eyes. To envelope him within his arms, to keep him steady and more importantly, close.

“I haven’t heard you enter your room,” he says instead, and Brian laughs darkly and mumbles something about the library. None of the chairs in the fucking library are worth sleeping in, and Pat debates whether Brian would listen to him, were he to direct him back to his godsforsaken bedroom for a nap, as though he were a child.

“Help me put the swords away,” he says instead, and Brian nods after a moment of staring into the distance and follows Pat after waving dismissively at Jonah, who’s dourly returning to his seat under the tree. (Like a godsdamned _hound_.) Pat gestures Brian into the equipment shed and shows him where to hang their swords — “You truly know nothing of combat, do you?” he says fondly — and then Brian steps towards him, looping an arm around his waist, and. Oh, Pat’s heart softens. And resting his head against Pat’s shoulder.

“I managed to convince them there was good in my learning to fight, which is the only reason I’m here instead of a tense room full of grumpy nobility, arguing over the merits of invasion versus defense.”

Pat lifts an arm and holds it just away from Brian’s back until he reminds himself he’s allowed, and he does touch Brian then, tugging him closer, until he’s breathing out against Pat’s neck. “We’ll not tell them how quickly I laid you out.”

Brian’s laugh sounds punched out of him, high in his throat, wet heat against Pat’s skin; and Pat’s entire body goes taut when Brian kisses him there, firm pressure.

“I’d thought about instead going to my room and sleeping,” he says, and Pat’s free hand flexes at his side before finding the edge of the workbench behind him, steadying himself.

“I’ve been considering the same,” Pat says, though now an entirely different set of events is rushing through his mind: all involving Brian’s bed, but with the both of them in it.

“Would you lay me out as quickly?” Brian asks, and Pat’s fingers spasm on the wood of the workbench, and Brian leans back enough to look at him. “Would you?”

The bastard expects an answer, apparently, but Pat’s throat has gone dry and clicks when he swallows. He — remembers a time when he was charming. When he could beguile someone into his bed, when he was godsdamned suave about it. With Brian, he’s a fool.

“Matthew,” Brian says, and Pat closes his eyes and swallows back the rising urge to ask him to — to hear him say _Patrick_.

“May I,” he says, and Pat nods, and he makes, gods, the most embarrassing noise when there’s a touch at his chin. When nails scrape gently over his stubble, when that hand settles just below his jaw, thumb hooked just behind his ear. “May I,” he says again, and Pat bites down on the inside of his cheek.

He’s of two minds. He can’t bear to be treated so tenderly, he doesn’t deserve it, and it’s what he wants above all else. He hasn’t earned the warmth in Brian’s gaze, and of course he has, he’s fucking killed for him and he’d do it again, wouldn’t he? He’s a charlatan, the most grievous of liars, and Brian touches him as though he’s precious and if he were to stop, Pat might collapse in on himself, broken.

“Please,” he says, and he couldn’t explain what it is he’s asking for — a rougher hand. For Brian to leave. For Brian to _know_ and stand here before him anyway, touching him like this.

Brian nudges their noses together. He breathes against Pat’s mouth and then kisses him, the slightest brush of lips, and _he_ makes the noise, like he’s been kicked, and Pat’s fingers dig into his shoulder. They kiss. Fuck, they kiss, and Brian does not push, doesn’t crowd Pat against the bench; he kisses him until Pat opens his mouth, until Pat licks at his lips. He kisses him until Pat leans back enough, supporting himself on the bench and letting his legs drift apart, inviting Brian forward.

They kiss until they don’t, until Pat sinks his teeth into Brian’s bottom lip as he pulls back, until Brian breathes hot against his cheek. “May I,” Brian says, and Pat thinks of turning, of Brian’s hands rough on his trousers and then on his ass, of Brian’s cock sliding eagerly into him, of splinters from the workbench working their way into Pat’s palms with every thrust. (He does not think of Estella’s counsel, of her barbed questions about the _gift he would grant the prince_ , about the look she’d given him when he’d told her baldly he’d fucked and she should let this topic die.)

“Yes,” Pat replies, already pushing at him, he needs space to move, he expects — and then Brian drops smoothly to his knees and Pat’s hands are left hovering stupidly in front of him while Brian works at the ties of his trousers. “What,” he says, and Brian gives him a quicksilver smile and wraps his nimble fingers around Pat’s cock and gives it one tug, two, and then sucks him down. “ _What_ ,” he repeats, stupidly, and then, “oh, oh, Brian,” when Brian’s hand squeezes at the base of his cock.

Brian looks up, his lips stretched spit-shiny around him, and Pat’s hips shudder forward without his meaning to, and Brian grunts and takes it, his eyes heavy-lidded and long-lashed and open enough to gaze up at Pat — and somewhere between seconds and the stretch of eternity, Pat yanks at Brian's hair and spills into his mouth.

And Brian, the absolute — truly, fuck — bastard, smiles up at him, and a little — _fuck_ — come leaks out of the corner of that smile, and Pat slumps back against the workbench and covers his face with his hands and — laughs. Fuck. _Fuck_ , he laughs, and he can feel himself blushing, and Brian sits back on his feet and. Huh. Well that’s. Fine.

Brian sees the shift in his expression to confusion and he glances down, to where he’s clearly not aroused. “It's not personal," he says, and he lets Pat pull him to his feet, then kisses Pat's cheek — gods, sweetly, like he's trying to be reassuring. "I'm just so fucking exhausted."

Pat — laughs again, disbelieving and then, oh, oh damn him, a little in love, and he touches Brian's pretty face, the curve of his tired smile. "Brush off your knees before we leave."

And Brian laughs too, and does.

♚♔♚

Brian's excuse works. He joins Pat and Jonah most afternoons and usually they do train: Brian squares off against Pat or Jonah and manages not to end _every_ fight on his ass by the third day. By the end of the week Pat and Jonah have silently concluded that he takes direction from Jonah better, because he doesn't waste energy making innuendo about _keeping your feet spread_ when it's Jonah saying it.

He also doesn't loop his hand around Jonah's ankle when he's on the dirt and staring up at the sky, caressing his fingers across skin and bone. (Pat had only barely kept himself from jamming his other foot down on Brian’s wrist, so wholly surprised was he by Brian’s — godsdamned flirtations.)

Brian’s excuse works insofar as allowing him time in the courtyard, at least. Anything beyond that is still fleeting: Pat thinks he’s still sleeping in the library. They make the most of it — Jonah and Laura have started leaving as soon as Brian shepherds Pat towards the equipment shed; and Pat would usually be mortified by it, but he doesn’t have the time. He’s too easily distracted mapping the topology of Brian’s mouth; memorizing the melody of Brian’s moans when Pat fists his fat cock.

On Sundays Pat and Jonah don’t train, and Pat’s sure he’ll not see Brian until the following day — and he doesn’t. He entertains himself in the library (there’s evidence of Brian’s catnaps: Pat brought along a pillow and has propped it inconspicuously in the chair he knows Brian favors) and then heads to bed, and it’s as he’s removing his boots he hears the door to Brian’s room open.

He pauses, boots untied, and listens to the slow shuffle of feet on the other side of the wall.

And then he hears the handle of the door between their rooms jostle, and a soft curse — and Pat remembers that, gods, four months ago he locked that door and has had no reason to unlock it since.

He slides the latch and throws the door open, _shit, sorry_ , and Brian’s there, as tired as he’s been the rest of the week, and as beautiful as Pat’s ever seen him.

“May I?” Brian asks, and Pat is sure he needs to explain why the door was locked and — knows he couldn’t, that he would lock up trying to find the words to describe that distrust. But he lets Brian in, of course he does, and Brian drags his feet towards Pat’s bed before slumping onto the end. Comfortable. As though he — belongs there.

Pat rather likes the look of him.

Brian rubs a hand across his face, digging his palm into his eye before dropping both arms to his thighs, his hands hanging between his knees. “I don’t want to read another document for a month. I don’t want to read _anything_ for — a solid 24 hours.”

Pat swallows a laugh as he closes the curtains, and when he turns back it’s to a bleary-eyed Brian, staring into the middle distance.

“You should sleep then,” he says, a tease but also the truth, and Brian groans and lifts a limp hand towards him.

“No, no,” he whines and Pat goes to him, feeling indulgent. Stands near enough that Brian can grab him at the hip and pull him closer, between his spread knees. “I’ve not seen you for what feels like eons.” He presses his forehead to Pat’s stomach, and Pat hears the quiet smack of a kiss. “I’ve made you a widower.”

“I’m marrying Jonah,” Pat says, and Brian laughs against him. “I have a thing for alphas whose asses I can kick.”

“He beats you sometimes,” Brian murmurs and Pat lifts a hand to his head, twists his hair in his fingers and tugs gently.

“You don’t,” he says, and Brian hums and doesn’t protest. Works at the buttons on Pat’s shirt instead, pushing the fabric to the side and pulling his undershirt from his trousers, until he can press his mouth to skin.

"Come to bed." It takes him three tries to undo Pat's trousers, and Pat tightens his fingers in his hair.

He's smiling when he asks, "You sure?" and Brian tips his head back, cradling himself in Pat's touch, and says, "I want to fall asleep inside you."

Pat's grip tightens reflexively and his mouth is dry, and he touches Brian's cheek with his other thumb. "Brian," he manages, his tongue clicking, and Brian pulls his trousers down over his hips, kissing the near-ticklish skin above his, gods, his swiftly hardening cock.

"Climb up so I can get my mouth on you," he says, his tone too lazy to be much of an order, and Pat breathes out a laugh and steps back — he'll, oh, he'll memorize the sad _hey_ Brian makes when he does — and undresses, and enjoys the way Brian is watching him, eyes heavy-lidded and mouth just open, his tongue slowly tracing his lips.

He unlaces Brian's boots and sets them aside, and then unsnaps the bottoms of his trousers and peels down his stockings. He presses a kiss to the side of Brian’s knee (hears his gentle _oh_ ) and then stands, and the — gods, the way Brian looks at him is.

Pat has never wanted to deserve something more.

“Undress yourself, Your Highness,” he says, and Brian’s laugh fills Pat with such warmth, even as Brian completely disregards him and grabs him at the waist again, tugs him forward, Pat’s bare skin meeting his clothed thighs as Pat straddles him.

Pat could feel awkward — should, _would_ , except for how Brian kisses the center of his chest. His collarbones. Scrapes his teeth against Pat’s throat which — shit, sends sparks down Pat’s spine, and then asks, “May I?”

“Which part?” Pat says easily, dropping a hand to Brian’s lap, palming at his cock through his trousers, filling as they speak.

“Gods, all of it,” Brian replies, and Pat yelps out a surprised laugh when Brian tightens his grip and tumbles them over, so he can shimmy down the bed and lick Pat into his mouth.

♚♔♚

“You’re —” Brian strains, his face mashed against Pat’s shoulder, his arm around Pat’s waist, palm flat against his belly. “Fuck, you’re.”

“Hold — hold there,” Pat gasps, and Brian does, a throaty moan spilling from his lips, and Pat closes his eyes, he.

He bucks his hips forward into his own grip on his cock and he whines at the solid anchor of Brian’s knot, the stretch of him — and Brian’s arm around his waist rocks him back, like he can’t help himself, and they both grunt, they. _Fuck_. Pat grabs at Brian’s arm, finds his hand and drags it to his cock, _shit_ , arches back and — _ha_ , knocks their heads together, gods, and they’re both laughing when he comes over their tangled fingers.

♚♔♚

Pat spends time with Jonah. (In that he has no choice.) He spends time with Laura — their relationship evolving from her mocking him during training to his accompanying her when she ventures into the town, to visit schoolchildren or review crops or bolster support for what will likely be a full scale war, once the politicians have made up their minds.

He spends time with Brian, of course. He’s still comparatively useless with a blade, but Pat’s not embarrassed by him anymore. 

The first time he knocks Pat’s sword from his grip, they barely make it to their rooms. (There’s a nostalgia to that fucking workbench in the equipment shed, but Pat has already made fonder memories in Brian’s bed, slicking his fingers and then his cock while Brian panted up at him; or in his own bed, Brian covering every inch of him, rocking their hips together slowly as they breathe each other’s breath.) The second time Brian bests him, they barely pass through the door to Pat’s room before Brian has him pressed to the wall, biting at his neck, dragging his teeth against his stubble, their legs slotting together.

The third time, Brian disarms Jonah first and then holds his blade to Pat’s throat, a grin stretching across his face as his shoulders heave, and Pat laughs while Jonah lectures him not to _get cocky_. And back in Pat’s room Brian kisses him, and pushes him down to the bed, and tastes his slick, opens him with his dexterous fingers (calloused, now) and his clever tongue. And while Pat reaches back, hand finding Brian’s hair, Brian gasps against Pat’s neck and tells him, voice thick, that he can’t — _fucking wait, for your heat, if that’s — if that’s all right to, to say, gods, ha, M-Matthew —_

And after, Brian asleep next to him, Pat stares up at the canopy of his bed and… and he thinks. He thinks about half a year gone by.

He presses his hand flat to his stomach and longs to speak to his mother. To Brian's father, long dead. To — to the husband of the wretched earl, kept fucked and full, who has experience and a perspective that makes Pat want to curl into a ball and never unclench, but who has laid in bed during many moments just like this. Who has counted three months back without a heat and… known.

Pat has missed heats before. The summer of his seventeenth year he fell to a malaise, could barely find the will to eat let alone get out of bed — and the midomega had spoken with him, touched their palm to his forehead and calmly told him it happened sometimes, with stress. That they themselves had a year without heats, during the famine before Pat was even a twinkle in his alpha's eye.

And then they'd given him a quick smile, a mischievous look that had almost broken through the fog in Pat's head, and told him that he shouldn't think he could take advantage of it, with company. "I bore my first that following spring," they'd said, "because the only good thing that year was my wife, and we spent as much of it as we could in bed." And Pat had laughed at that, a little, and they'd told him he would see the end of this.

The last six months have been stressful. 

Brian hums next to him, the early stages of waking, and when he shifts, his hand bumps into Pat's arm. Stays there, a single point of connection.

Pat pushes his palm down, as though he could feel… and he hopes, indistinctly, for something amorphous and… and maybe good.

♚♔♚

He’s with Laura, Jonah four steps behind, when horns blare from outside. From the castle walls? The gate? But no, it sounds as though it’s coming from multiple points, and there’s a shout that’s echoed until it’s close enough for Pat to hear: _Richemonte_.

Which means the council no longer has to debate the merits of invasion versus defense.

When he looks to Laura, she’s blanched white as snow, her mouth half-open around her explanation of a play the town’s school wants to put on, about a rabbit and a tortoise, and then Jonah’s hand is around Pat’s arm.

“Larder,” he orders and Laura nods once, eyes wide, and she takes off down the hall at a run. Pat shakes Jonah’s grip and turns to him, and he can tell from Jonah’s expression he’s about to hear something he’s going to disagree with.

“We’re headed to the stables.”

“Oh fuck you,” Pat says easily, and he starts towards the council chambers, evading Jonah’s stubbornly reaching hands, as though he’d let Jonah grab and direct him. “I’ll put you out on your ass,” Pat snaps and Jonah snorts and tries again.

“I’ve got orders, you bastard,” Jonah argues, his hand falling on Pat’s shoulder, and Pat rounds on him, shoving him away.

He could likely make a break for it, the council chambers close enough that he’d have the doors open before Jonah caught him. “If that’s Richemonte, then I have one priority.”

“To leave,” Brian says, and Pat feels another obstinate _fuck you_ on the tip of his tongue when he turns. Brian looks — more alert than he has in weeks, alert and determined, his right hand on the hilt of the sword at his hip. “You’re going with Jonah, back to Neauxmaine.”

Pat — laughs, the sound a little manic even to his own ears. “You can’t be serious. I’m as able as any member of the guard. As half your army, I’d bet, and it’s stupid to —”

Jonah snorts next to him and Brian shakes his head once. “You wouldn’t — gods, even if you stayed you wouldn’t be fighting, you’re. Listen, you’re going now, okay?” Brian takes a step forward and holds out a small satchel to Jonah; Pat intercepts it, ignoring Brian’s grunt of objection, and opens it to find coin and a letter sealed with the Baltimere crest.

Like he’d _planned_ for this.

“If you think for one second I’m running away, Brian,” he snaps, the very idea so fucking offensive, when he’d — when he’d lost everything, to come here, and gained so much for it, and Brian grabs his hand at the wrist and squeezes tight, as though he could convince him through sheer pressure.

“Patrick, if anything happened to you I’d never be able to forgive myself.”

Pat laughs in disbelief. “That’s all well and good, Brian, but if anything happened to _you_ —” 

And then he… stops.

Goes numb.

Swallows, and thinks he’s probably. Probably gone pale.

Brian takes advantage of — of how his mind has stalled, how he’s gone stiff with a long forgotten terror, he hasn’t thought of discovery in so long and apparently, _apparently_...! — and Brian lays his hands flat on Pat’s cheeks and kisses him, then nods to Jonah.

“Knock him out and drag him if you have to.”

“Say that. Say that again,” Pat says, instead of — instead of how that might endanger Brian’s heir. He’s likely weeks till quickening so there’s no telling if it will stick, or even if it’s just stress. And Brian — he _knows_ —

Brian presses their foreheads together and he closes his eyes, and when he pulls back he looks — handsome, and sad, and forgiving. If Pat isn’t imagining that. “Patrick,” he says, and Pat’s throat clicks as he swallows again, “I love you. Okay? Be safe. Not here.”

“Okay,” Pat agrees, because he’s not sure he’s — physically fucking present right now, feels as though his mind is observing the circumstances from a safe distance, and then Brian’s giving him the most heartbreaking smile and he’s gone down the hall, and Jonah’s taking the satchel from Pat and then frogmarching him to the stable.

He’s given Pinecone’s reins. He mounts the mare and waits for Jonah to lead them out of the castle grounds, headed north, away from the shouting and the blaring horns.

“You both knew,” he manages when they’ve stopped to rest the horses, what must be — hours later. Perhaps. Pat’s mind is consumed by a dull roar, as though the sea lives between his ears. He’s stayed atop Pinecone only because his body knows how to hold himself upright. Only because he’s not a prince. He’s a simple guard, sent to secure an alliance out of desperation because of the threat of war that’s now…

“Since I met you at the cabin,” Jonah says, and Pat nods.

That explains how strange the both of them were. It doesn’t explain why Brian kissed him. Fucked him. Said he loved —.

Pat flexes his right hand, stretching out his fingers. It doesn’t particularly feel as though he’s controlling it. It doesn’t particularly feel like his own hand at all. (Matthew’s hand. Will the alliance hold? Baltimere needs Neauxmaine’s support now. Baltimere is under siege.) He thinks he’s in some sort of — shock.

“I think I’m pregnant,” he says, rolling Brian's ring on his finger, and Jonah spits out a _fuck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D?


End file.
